When the Bernalillo County Sheriff Department’s (BCSD) Metro Air Support Unit (MASU) receives a search and rescue call from dispatch, time, speed, and, most importantly, situational awareness (SA) are crucial, make-or-break factors that determine the outcome of a critical incident. To add pressure to an already intense situation, New Mexico’s

If you’ve ever served your nation as a member of the military or served your community as a first responder, you may have heard the acronym, “ATAK.” Interestingly enough, depending on which of those communities you were a member of, that acronym could stand for something different. In the military,

Disclaimer for our readers: Since this article was written, TAK is now available on the Google Play Store. Users that need the military-grade capabilities and features of ATAK can reach out via their TAK administrator through takmaps.com for access to the military version of the application. The Android Team Awareness

Wildfires are proving to be more deadly and destructive than ever, making real-time situational awareness and communications increasingly critical for wildland fire crews. Recent federal legislation passed in the United States even requires new location tracking technology to improve individual firefighters’ safety on the fire line — but what happens

Mobile devices and applications are increasingly critical to day-to-day public safety operations, but many organizations are unprepared in the event cell phone connectivity — and access to these new tools — becomes unreliable or unavailable. New advancements in mobile and wireless communications are now allowing emergency response and recovery teams

In my previous article on The Last Mile, I looked at the current state of the wildfire threat in the United States and how recent climate changes and shifts in our environment are not only making wildfires more frequent, they’re making them more destructive and deadly. In that article, I

The summer and fall months are peak wildfire season thanks to a combination of warm, dry weather, low precipitation and high winds. And these months are incredibly important for firefighters and emergency response organizations across the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest because of a wildfire’s sheer destructive potential. Just last