Paradigms for Next Generation Public Safety Systems

Network(s) of communicating objects capable of analysing and adapting to local conditions through an infrastructure of sensors and just-in-time hierarchies of command and control (C2) responsive by event type and geolocation.

Dominant Characteristics

- decentralized

- self-organizing

- self-recognizing

- self-regulating

- self-sustaining

- local intelligence/global resource allocation

Potential Developments

- use of virtual environments with real-time sensor overlays for C2 with increased requirements for combinations of low-fidelity and high-fidelity just-in-time mapping

- greater reliance on local autonomy with access to very large data marts for strategy, tactics, procedures, and analytical tools that are jointly organized and created (authored) by
communities of strike and task specialists (see WikiPedia)

- machine intelligence advances to semi-autonomous operation within 10 years (and that is a conservative estimate) enabling safer at-a-distance operations with less human-in-the-loop control (that is, more tactical authority resides in the programs). Presents training challenges for joint human/machine forces (eg, secure identity management systems - see below for idiotypic response). Within 20 years, can operate fully autonomously in adaptive mode.

- increased requirements for independent, autonomous energy generation sources

- increased use of biological assets to combat biological threats (eg, RNA defenses, more work on idiotype-based vaccines). Note that immune network response models are particularly interesting as a model for self-organizing/self-regulating response systems. See Niels Jerne network hypothesis for immune systems. A thought is that task forces act as T-cell analogs and strike forces act as B-cell analogs.

- increased use and diversity of strike teams under the command of just-in-time task forces. Occasional need for joint task forces but emphasis on common training and common intelligence assets with application of immune network theories of clonal recognition (part of the concept of self-organizing, self-regulating systems).

- smaller forces against smaller groups of network-organized combatants (the criminal has the same or better assets by type and kind. Resurgence of non-fundamentalist Mafia-like organizations.) The ability of the joint task forces to self-organize guarantees scaling (See NIMS/NRP).