Last week, West Virginia's Homeland Security Division became the first division in the country to adopt Verizon's new integrated emergency response system that is designed to pull all emergency-response radio systems, along with voice and data services, into a common IP-based network. The system, known as the Verizon Communications Interoperability Solution, uses routers and other customer-premises equipment to convert all designated radio signals within the emergency response system to IP. Thus, police, firefighters and emergency medical service providers will be able to communicate, even though they use different radio frequencies to talk through their individual devices.

In this Q&A session, we talk with Jimmy Gianato, the director of the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, about why his division is choosing to deploy the Verizon system, and also about the new technological challenges that emergency response systems face on both a local and a nationwide basis.

What was your department's need for Verizon's integrated emergency response system? Can you give some concrete examples of some things you can do now with this system that you couldn't have done before?

We had actually procured this system prior to Verizon's announcement and we looked at it for months before we decided to buy it. Specifically, we looked at whether it fit overall with our current phone and networking equipment. In the end, we opted to go with Verizon's optic system to help us use VoIP to connect our legacy radio systems to our interoperable radio project.

We decided to go with Verizon's system because it was more easily integrated with some of the systems that we've already installed in-state, such as Cisco's IP-based phone systems. Since we're already using Cisco routers, then integrating them into a common platform made a lot of sense to us. The system also has a couple of important capabilities and we're doing some innovative things with it. Right now, we are in the process of planning to connect our state flood warning system to it, so that we can monitor stream levels and so forth. Then, when certain streams begin to rise and it becomes likely that flooding will occur, we will be able to alert public officials to these emergency situations.