Syracuse University (SU) and Virginia Tech (VT) are creating the Wireless Grid Innovation Testbed (WiGiT) with support of National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnership for Innovation program grants #0227879 and #0917973.
Recent federal reports highlight inter-operability challenges in radio communications at catastrophic events and critical incidents. At a crisis site, inter-operability is the “ability of disparate and diverse” radios to interact toward “common goals, involving the sharing of information and knowledge via defined or ad hoc processes to achieve coordinated actions” (Treglia, McKnight, Kuehn, Ramnarine-Rieks, Venkatesh & Bose. 2011). We address problems of intelligently inter-connecting first responders and stakeholders at sites where multiple jurisdictions and diminished communications capabilities are involved.
