Project HELP will establish the technical foundations and a strategy development roadmap for a solution framework aimed at increasing the wireless communication capabilities of public safety organisations by proposing innovative approaches for the management of network and spectrum resources. Project HELP activities which will be addressed on the basis of three major considerations:

• Project HELP will capitalise relevant work done in other organisations and projects in Europe from the point of view of users, regulators, industries and research bodies. Building on a thorough understanding of the state-of-the-art as well as of the limitations of related reference designs, the concepts and solutions proposed in Project HELP clearly represent a source of innovation in this strategic field.
• Project HELP is distinctly oriented towards the establishment of a solid solution framework intended to exploit synergies between wireless technologies for commercial services and public safety communications. Stretching the gap between both domains is believed to foster the evolution and capabilities of public safety communications systems and avoid the current situation where public safety communications systems lag far behind capabilities available in commercial mobile networks. Project HELP intends to define a specific solution framework backed by a qualified critical mass so that it can constitute a solid basis for the development of specific solutions.
• Project HELP will maximise the impact of its results, thus meeting one of the principal expectations of European society. In this way, networking and dissemination will play an important role in the project. Connections will be established with the most relevant organisations. This is a key point to reach expected critical mass and a solid consensus building towards the definition and adoption of a clear strategy for the realisation of advanced public safety communications.

Over such a basis, the detailed objectives of Project HELP are stated as follows:

Objective 1: To identify operational user requirements, scenarios and overall system requirements.

Project HELP will identify and describe the most critical public safety operational scenarios with respect to the need for communication resources as well as challenging radio communication environment. The scenarios will be created jointly with public safety users from diverse emergency service organisations and from as many countries across Europe as possible. Envisioned scenarios cover large-scale incidents that would require a coordinated response from crisis managers and first responders from different agencies across Europe and with resources from all levels of government. Based on the description of the operational scenarios and user requirements, the system requirements for a flexible and secure composite wireless communications solution will be defined.

Objective 2: To define a solution framework (system concept) for the provision of public safety communications over diverse wireless infrastructures.

The system concept definition will be addressed by conducting a feasibility study that will cover aspects such as:

• Defining the role that each system should take attending to its capabilities and the corresponding techniques and solutions that should be implemented to enable efficient interoperation among all involved systems.
• Determining required features and functionalities, changes/extensions that will enable the use of commercial systems, based on, e.g., 3GPP and IEEE 802.x standards, for public safety communications in emergency and disaster relief operations. In particular, capabilities for network sharing and traffic prioritisation will be considered. Furthermore, the potential support of specialised PMR-like services over mainstream cellular technologies (e.g. group services) will also be covered. Finally, the support of public networks may not be limited to emergency situations, e.g. public safety users could also use these networks during routine operation. 
• Determining internetworking solutions between public safety and commercial communication systems. In particular, interworking solutions between PMR networks (e.g. legacy TETRA networks, more advanced solutions conceived around advanced packet switching networks) and public wireless access networks (e.g. 3GPP networks, WiMAX, 802.11-based networks) will be addressed so that public safety communications services can be provided over the two types of networks in an incident area. As well, interoperability between diverse PMR technologies used in the distressed area will be considered. These mechanism should cover technical issues, related to mobility, security and handling of access rights to the involved wireless systems. 
• Analysing the feasibility of introducing specialised IP-based service platforms for public safety communications. In this regard, IMS-based platforms for emergency and first responder networks supporting most of the functionality required by emergency networks can be envisioned so that these platforms can be reachable from the diverse wireless networks. These platforms can support, e.g., specific directory and presence services allowing the crisis management authorities to contact the relevant emergency resources where ever they are located and what ever communication networks they are using.
• Determining new spectrum usage models to enhance communications in emergency scenarios by means of proper spectrum management mechanisms among PMR and commercial radio technologies, including the operation of fast deployable communication systems. In this context, innovative spectrum usage models enabled by the development of dynamic spectrum access technologies like cognitive radio will be considered. Advanced forms of exclusive spectrum usage rights (e.g. governed by a spectrum broker) together with spectrum commons and opportunistic spectrum access (e.g., opportunistic usage of white space in the UHF TV bands) will be considered for the overall solution, which may require the combination of several approaches together with dynamic network planning.
• Ascertaining the qualitative benefits of the availability of additional communications resources from several heterogeneous systems for the communication capacity of the public safety and emergency services. 

Objective 3: To define a framework for the management of the composite emergency network.
A feasibility study for the realisation of a flexible radio network operation and management framework will be addressed considering different management levels and principles:

• Inter-system management. Mechanisms to determine communication needs and capacity requirements of the affected zone attending to established operational crisis management requirements. Determination of the operational configuration and capacity planning requirements of each network within the composite emergency system have to be derived attending to the capabilities supported by each available network.
• Intra-system network management. A range of management mechanism will be analysed (e.g. dynamic network planning, radio resource management algorithms, flexible spectrum management strategies) in order to cope with the particular role and communication requirements of each involved system while enabling the synergic operation of the composite radio networks. The proposed solutions will consider that the drivers for these mechanisms in emergency scenarios can be quite different than those considered in normal network operation (e.g., reliability can be a crucial driver instead of improving system capacity, user/services prioritisation can also be a key issue). Specific mechanisms to cope with agile infrastructure-based deployment (e.g. portable base stations) will also be considered.
• Terminal equipment management. Different operational modes (e.g. infrastructure-based, direct) will be considered along with their corresponding management mechanisms. Capabilities and management criteria enabling opportunistic spectrum access for terminals operating in direct/ad-hoc modes will be of particular relevance.
• The conception of the overall management framework will consider self-management, autonomic-management and cognitive-management as potential driving factors. Furthermore, concepts such as “virtual networks for public safety communications”, where the creation of virtual logical self-organising network on top of existing network technologies is envisioned in order to reduce complexity and facilitate immediate availability, will be further elaborated.

Objective 4: To conduct a techno-economic analysis.
The economic impact that the novel technical solutions proposed in Project HELP may have on the involved stakeholders (e.g. administrations, network operators) will be investigated. Recommendations regarding business models as well as desirable standardisation and regulatory actions will be developed. In particular, some aspects that will be considered are:

• Cost savings by sharing existing commercial networks instead of deploying and operating private networks.

• Leveraging technology investments targeted at a user population that is orders of magnitude larger than the PMR market.

• Enhanced network features which may appeal attractive (high ARPU, low churn) to new user groups (professional users).

• Shared access to otherwise unavailable spectrum.

• Analysing the feasibility of adapting commercial networks to public safety needs in case of emergencies in terms of investigating measures to offset possible economic impacts on the network operator.

Objective 5: To establish a consolidated basis and roadmap for the realisation of the envisioned solution framework. Project HELP dissemination plan is strongly committed towards the achievement of a qualified wide awareness and support of relevant end users, European industry and research community so that the resulting solution framework will firmly constitute a solid basis and establish a clear roadmap for a future realisation of better public safety communications. Project HELP will establish links with other relevant bodies or organisations to reach expected critical mass and establish a consolidated basis for the envisioned emergency composite network system:

• A User Advisory Board (UAB) and an Operator Advisory Board (OAB) will be established to validate system requirements and the envisioned system concept and solution framework respectively.

• Two Workshops will be organised to provide an independent validation process and dissemination of the projects objectives and developments.

• Project HELP will establish links with regulatory and standardisation organisations, which are working on the evolution of public safety communications. This includes ETSI TC TETRA, ETSI TC RRS, ETSI TC EMTEL, CEPT, Project MESA, the relevant agencies and DGs of the European Commission and FRONTEX. Liaison with the UN responsible for the Tampere Agreement on Public Safety Communications is also envisaged

• Links will be established with ongoing projects in the same area like Public Safety Communication Europe (PSC-E), EULER and others.

The objective is to maximise the visibility and the effect of Project HELP results in the regulation and standardisation processes. A clear roadmap will be established to drive future research activities. This roadmap will be the basis for a potential proposal of a large scale phase II demonstration project aimed at consolidating the HELP system concept by developing specific solutions (functional specifications, mechanisms and algorithms) and assessing their performance and experimental validation.