Situational awareness technology for critical services

Immediately accessible digitised situational awareness (SA) has, until now, been out of reach
of the critical services. As a result, they remain dependent on manual or limited approaches,
which provide only a partial & historic view. Compton Services has developed a number of
concepts called ‘Scout’, which indicate that a break-through to fully digital & real time
situational awareness is possible. This breakthrough could, even after exploiting commercial
developments in mobile communications & computing, require significant development.
Its impact in areas from mountain rescue & emergency relief, through to peace-keeping &
defence operations could be profound. This impact is probably most graphically illustrated by
the impact that real or near real time SA could have had on casualty figures in the recent
Afghanistan conflict where of the 450 British troop deaths, 226 were to improvised explosive
devices (IED’s).