Specification and Design - Dissertation Example

Specification and Design This project is being done to all the stakeholders in emergency response; these are the people who respond to various types of medical emergencies such as accidents, fires, collapse of buildings or crime scenes. The people who are expected to use this VoIP service are the nurses who respond to emergencies, fire fighters, the police and the victims of the emergencies. The sponsors of this project who are an emergency response unit found out that they almost always reached the scene of the emergencies being late, and when they arrived there, they had to wait to in order for other stakeholders to arrive. For instance crime scenes where a person had been shot, when the medics arrive, they had to wait for the police before they could save the individual, therefore the sponsors found the need for a communication system where the information from an emergency scene would reach all the people involved in the emergency simultaneously. The aim of the project therefore is to create a communication system where information that originated from a scene of emergency would reach all the people involved at the same time therefore hasten the pace of response. In this project, the solution that would enable the integration of all the people involved in response in one call would be the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In designing the VoIP, a software will be designed that will enable a victim of an emergency to communicate with several departments that are responsible for responding to a certain emergency. The software will be designed in such a way that for instance when it is a fire emergency, the relevant personnel will be notified which will be different from the case of a crime scene. This will be enable by the programming which when a person choose the type of an emergency, the software will direct the calls to the specific departments that are responsible to respond to the emergency. There will be no major modifications, however, due to the sophistication of crime and to avoid tampering of the software by criminals, the security protocol of the software will be improved to match the best practises in the communication sector. Literature survey With the current paces in technology where there are increasing number of service that are available over wire and wireless connections, the technology is changing from narrowband such as telephones over wires to the wideband where the services that previously used the narrowband would migrate and use the wideband. According to Bonometti article, “competitive business advantages in the era of unified super convergence” digital convergence will expand by entailing the following. Improved evenness in information flow between the cable and cable less communication technologies, which will be the outcome of changes in cable less technology, standards and protocol. Real dependence between gadgets, platforms and the multimedia types that they support. The third thing that digital convergence will entail is the intelligence functions such as the semantic web and other machine based interactions and embedded applications that enable content searches in rich media (Bonometti, 2009, p 248-257). A study by William and Russell on Huawei, which is a technology firm, based in China where it has always been believed that the country is the greatest copier of technologies that have been developed by other countries. In this study, they found out that despite Huawei being a global leader in provision of softswitch platform that is used in VoIP, it has been involved in developing of technologies in the next generation networks (NGN) that provides for multimedia solution across different platforms such as mobile phones, landlines and television sets. The article “Customized Executive Learning: a Business Model for the Twenty-First Century” by Jamie Anderson and Gert-Jan, explains how the improvement of the model for administrative learning has been enhanced by four key developments. They include increase in intellectuals who do not work in educational institutions, the acknowledgment of open partnership as a great way to drive innovation and customisation. The widespread use of information and communication technologies that has made it possible for virtual teams to bring integrated academic findings and the fourth development is the demand by clients that the educational options should match their needs. Linda K Moore in her article An Emergency Communications Safety Net: Integrating 911 and Other Services, he explained how the government of the united states is to increase the access of the 911 service it spread all over the country with as well as integrating it with other emergency response services in the country. Conduct of the Project Before the actual designing of the software, it will be imperative to conduct a background search on the information available for the problem. This information will mainly comprise of the types and frequency of the various types of emergencies and how the cases were handled prior to the designing of the software. In addition the communication protocol that was used in case of emergencies, that is which authorities were to be informed first and the ones to be informed last, this would enable in deciding what to include in the software. In addition, how these problems were solved prior to the designing of the software will be important, as they will reveal other areas that may need development as well as borrowing some of the strengths in the previous communication modes. Data on how the functionality and information paths and protocol that the VoIP service uses will be necessary in order to design a software that will be easily integrated in the working of the VoIP service. In addition, the hotline numbers of the various emergency response units will be required as they are the ones that will be used to channel those calls, also the data on the local service providers will also be a necessity as the calls will have to be transmitted through a service provider. Due to the large number of institutions that will be required in implementation of this project, interpersonal and communication skills will be necessary in order to convince the stakeholder of the importance of the idea,, these skills will be acquired through a series of training sessions with a professional. The Design .In coming up with the software, the design that will be used will be the structured programming which will be to enhance the quality, clarity and reduce the time with which the software is to be completed within, this will be achieved by the use of subroutines, block structures, for and while loops. The sample design that the programming will use is as seen in the diagram below y n Statement of deliverables The deliverables that the software is supposed to customising of emergency calls, the customised emergency calls that will be made using this software will include the fire emergency customised call that will involve the police, fire fighters and ambulance services. The second customised call will involve crime in which the calls will be customised to the police and the ambulance services. The other customised call will be accident customised call that will involve the police, insurance agents, ambulance services and the towing services; in addition, the software will come with a user manual. Some of the desirable deliverables that will come with the software is the provision for calling relatives or next of kin of the victim or victims of the emergency. Before the software becomes fully operational, several experiments will have to be conducted with simulation calls to determine the applicability of the process. The successfulness of the software will be considered based on its capability to increase the linking process during an emergency; this will include the response time of the departments that are involved. If the call reaches all the relevant departments and at least two thirds of them respond for cases involving more than two departments or half is the case involve two departments, then the project will be termed as successful otherwise it will be considered a failure. In addition, if the departments respond within 20 minutes after the call is made; the project will be termed as a success otherwise if they use more than half an hour then the project will be deemed as not having satisfied its intended purpose. Plan This project will be carried out in three phases, they include Phase one: Designing of software for installation in the linking computer to make sure speedy linking and, which will take the first week of the assignment. In this phase, the software will be designed with the help of the supervisor making all the relevant information has been integrated in to the software to ensure it is functioning as expected. Phase two: Installing the software in a workstation so that it can facilitate customisation of phone numbers to receive every call and this will take one day, which will be on the eighth day of the assignment. In this phase, the software will be installed into computers and simulation tests will be run, the stakeholders that will be involved in the software will be invited for the briefing of the working of the software Phase three: Customisation and testing for the effectiveness of the software, this will take two days i.e. the ninth and the tenth day of the project. At this level, real life testing will be carried out in the most of the severe conditions to ascertain its quality and efficacy after which it will be ready for use. References Bonometti, Robert J. (2009) "Competitive business advantages in the era of Unified SuperConvergence", Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal incorporating Journal of Global Competitiveness, Vol. 19(4), pp.249 - 271 Read More