The Background
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is a public health agency of the African Union, the continental organization consisting of 55 African member states. Its goal is to support the public health initiatives of member states and strengthen the capacity of their health institutions to detect, prevent, control and respond quickly and eectively to disease threats and outbreaks.
The institution serves as a platform for member states to share and exchange knowledge and lessons from public health interventions. It is headquartered at the Africa CDC Coordinating Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which also contains the agency's Emergency Operations Centre.
The Challenge
The new headquarters building for Africa CDC, located in the African Village, south of Addis Ababa, was inaugurated in January 2023. The site covers an area of 90,000m2 with a total construction area of nearly 40,000m2. It includes an emergency operation centre, a data centre, a laboratory, a resource centre, briefing rooms, a training centre, a conference centre, offices, and expatriate apartments.
As part of the project, the new centre required the design and installation of a mission critical two-way radio communications system and integrated command centre (ICC) solution with full dispatching functionality. In addition, a resilient communications link was needed to connect the new headquarters building with the existing Africa CDC center in Addis Ababa.
The overall aim was to ensure the organization has a reliable and robust communications system to help Africa CDC in its mission to strengthen the capacity and capability of Africa’s public health institutions. The new communications system is designed to enable Africa CDC to respond quickly and eciently to any outbreak of disease or major health issues affecting the continent.
The Solution
The chosen solution is a Hytera Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) communications system and Hytera Integrated Command and Control (ICC) solution. The Hytera DMR conventional solution provides mission critical wireless communications in both the new and old Africa CDC centers based on powerful RD98XS DMR digital repeaters.
The two centers are linked 24/7 using an IP connection and have both outdoor and indoor signal coverage. Indoor coverage is ensured by the deployment of the Hytera Indoor Coverage System, which utilizes an RF signal booster to overcome obstacles in the radio path within buildings. To provide additional resilience, a dedicated Norsat (Hytera subsidiary brand) VSAT satellite terminal is deployed as a back-up link between the new CDC center and the old Africa CDC center which constitutes part of the African Union headquarters, in the event that the IP wireline link is down.
The Hytera ICC solution provides a multimedia unified communication platform with cutting edge command and control functionality, including a computer-aided emergency call center. The platform supports and converges multiple types of radio technology including DMR, mobile cellular and PSTN systems, as well as integrating visual feels from CCTV and data from IoT applications and other sources.
The ICC oers dispatchers an integrated visual display of assets on a map in real time to enhance dispatch effciency. This enables them to see at a glance where police ocers, vehicles and other assets are located, so the fastest and most appropriate resources can be dispatched in response to any incident. It also shows where incidents are occuring, along with the location of CCTV cameras, check-points, and other relevant infrastructure that might be brought into play to aid situational awareness.
The platform supports multiple dispatch options including flat dispatch to communicate directly with the police force on the scene. Multimedia dispatch enables video calling, pull-up, forward, conference and multimedia messaging to be used. The one-click dispatch option enables dispatchers to open a call or remotely operate any portable or mobile radio by clicking on the icon on the digital map.
The ICC system enables dispatchers to have full process control of the response to an incident. For example, real-time location tracking of officers and vehicles via the in-built GPS in the radios. The MRPS (Multimedia Recording and Playback System) ensures all types of audio, visual or text message communications are recorded and can be played back. The system is also able to detect abnormal or irregular behaviour and trigger an alarm to the control centre.
Africa CDC personnel were also issued with Hytera PD98X portable radios. The radios offer superior audio quality thanks to the 2.5 W output speaker and advanced noise cancellation technology to ensure clear and loud voice communication. The PD98X is tough and durable, as it is IP68 certified. It also enables frontline personnel to make full-duplex calls to other PD98X devices, telephones or mobile phones.
The Benefits
Resilient Communications
The Hytera DMR system and ICC solution provides Africa CDC with a robust end-to-end communications network with a wide range of functionalities and applications to support day-to-day and emergency operations.
Converged System
The ICC solution converges narrowband and broadband networks including PMR systems, public cellular mobile phone networks, PSTN fixed telephony networks, CCTV, Internet of Things networks and other police information systems. AI algorithms are applied to extract intelligence from the data received.
Visualized Dispatch
The visualized dispatch system provides operators with GIS maps showing the location of incidents and resources in real time. They can watch live CCTV feeds, track people and vehicles in real time and access data such as visual incident statistics, post route deployments and receive visual and audio pre-warnings and alarms.
Intelligent Dispatch
The platform supports a number of automated solutions including auto dispatch agency recommendations, resource recommendations, alarm caller identication, detection of abnormalities and alarming, and incident analysis and pre-plan recommendations.
Fast Dispatch
The command and control dispatch system enables fast incident recording by call-takers and fast incident dispatch - within 5 seconds. It supports advanced dispatch functionality, along with fast security plan making, deployment and skills learning.
Open System
The ICC is based on open standards technology as it adopts mainstream platforms and protocols to enable easy integration with third-party systems and applications. Hytera offers a software development kit (SDK) to programmers for third-party application integration. The platform is therefore easy to expand and upgrade.