DETROIT MI EMERGENCY RESPONSE SYSTEM FAILS Detroit, Michigan is the latest city to receive national news media attention for the failure of its P25 digital trunked radio system. The system failed during the 4th of July holiday weekend creating what was described as havoc for first responders. The radio system is for communication between 911 dispatchers and Detroit's police, fire and Emergency Management Service crews.It failed at around 5:30 a.m. Friday morning, July 5th causing a backlog of hundreds of calls. Michigan State Police stepped in to allow Detroit's emergency system to use the state's communication system. This backup was used for several days while crews worked to restore the Detroit system. Detroit Police Spokeswoman Sergeant Eren Stephens said that during the initial down time there had been some 60 priority one and more than 170 non-emergency calls that had backed up because of the issue. Like most new digital systems, Detroit's is dependant on centralized computer control. This means failure of the central processing system can bring the entire system to a halt.And while Detroit does have a mirrored back-up system in place it apparently had ever been fully tested and it also failed leading to state to step in.More is on-line at tinyurl.com/detroit-radio-down.
It's only Detroit. It's not like the rest of us in Michigan would miss it or anything. The are under staffed, out of money and basically toast. Just needs a match. Wonder of the zimmerman thing will get us some green space .. well after the fires die down.
Just one more example of what I have come to believe about recent technology: The more recent the technology, the more bugs, glitches, and failures it encounters. Not because the technology is new and still under development, but because the people developing it have no clue how to build reliable systems. Everyone seems to be in a mad rush to get the latest thing out the door and pays no attention whatsoever to making it actually work. In this case, it is not like the science underlying radio communications (even digital systems) is new. Just that those implementing it refuse to learn from the past to minimize mistakes. Or in Detroit's case (most likely), don't have the money to spend to implement it properly. And VisuTrac has the right idea here....
This comes as no great surprise. It can be mathematically shown that the more bells, whistles, and functions a device can perform, the more likely there will be a failure that takes the entire "system" out of service. Plug a "fail safe" link into the system, it's just one more failure path. Two simple beats one complex all to harry. (Design deficiencies are a different problem. In the case of life and limb, you can rest assured that more care is taken. Usually. But even then, you can think up a lot of product recalls where something was overlooked.) Detroit is a slightly different problem, it had all its eggs in one basket. Nader and Honda caused that basket to drop, and we can all see the uncooked omelet.
When the isp i work for started our all digital conversion it was a nightmare. Network planners figured it would take 6 months...2 years later and tripple the budget and its still ongoing. Sad that we waited and watched US cablecos in an effort to not make the same mistakes.
A tool, any tool, to be the best tool, should do one thing and one thing only. It should be exceptional at it. Be it software, hardware or even a company. It's when you start hearing words like 'Interoperability', 'Extending' and 'Synergy' that stuff starts to fall apart.
My daddy always told me "always use the right tool for the job, never use a hammer for a screwdriver, or a screwdriver for a hammer. each tool was made to do one thing very well."
