Thanks should go to Ross Buckenham, President of WebLink Wireless in Dallas, TX who offered both devices and airtime to any emergency service organization who requested to participate as well as some working capital to help role this out nationally, the field staff of Arch Communications who assisted in helping find participants for this study (especially Mike Dubbs in California, Adam Hochfelder in Dallas Texas, PG Wist in Owings Mills, MD and John Murray in Houston Texas), Michael Lane of Metrocall for regional assistance and support, and the engineering staff at Nextel Corporate who helped work out several early incompatibility issues for many participants who made extensive use of Nextel phones and their data network in their day to day emergency operations.
Special thanks for helping distribute information about the study should go to the California Office of Emergency Services home page, Law Enforcement Technology Magazine, American Ambulance Association, Western Fire Chiefs Association, International Association of Fire Chiefs, Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS) Magazine and Website, Ambulance Services Association, Nuclear News, Oregon Fire Chiefs Association, Firehouse.com and Oregon State Fire Marshall News Letter.
Internally, thanks should go to Mark Peter, Senior Engineer – Web Application and Server Development; Mark Fillmore, Senior Engineer – Wireless Device Applications, and Fred Kreger for all business development assistance. Additional thanks to Stacey Gould, Ph.D. for assistance with tabulating and running all statistics, and to all 440 local, county, regional, and national emergency service organizations that participated in this study.
Our staff, the organizations that assisted us, and the 440 emergency service organizations nationally who joined us in this study sincerely hope this data will help make a positive contribution to the ongoing communication enhancements happening domestically and around the world. The architecture of the study, its methods, results and discussion follow.