Episode 215: Unified Vision: TAK Transforming Public Safety Response with Brandon Alberd

Published 2024-05-02

Episode notes

Want to collaborate with different agencies? Then use TAK ...

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Welcome back to this 20-episode Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series! This 4 day event (March 4-7, 2024) was hosted at the Reveille Peak Ranch and by our friends at Granite Defense , and showcased the use of robotics (air/water/ground) in public safety via keynote presentations, training scenario stations, roundtable conversations, and more.

In this episode:

How TAK is revolutionizing data integration in public safety

Benefits of real-time data sharing among agencies

The growing adoption of TAK and its future potential

Learn from Brandon Alberd - the Program Manager for Texas TAK (Team Awareness Kit) .

Brandon talks about the importance of the Texas Robotics Summit and the role of TAK in public safety operations. TAK is a platform that integrates various data sources onto a single map, enabling shared consciousness and collaboration among different agencies. Brandon explains the TAK data creation and integration process, highlighting the benefits of time savings and improved officer safety.

He also emphasizes the need for adoption and the potential for integration with other industries. Brandon also shares his vision for the future of TAK in public safety and encourages listeners to reach out for more information.

So click play now to hear what he has to share! And stay tuned for the next Mini Series episode!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
0:45 Brandon Alberd of Texas TAK joins
1:13 Why the Texas Robotics Summit matters
1:39 What TAK is
2:28 Data creation and getting data onto a map
3:38 Early wins and success stories
4:36 How TAK saves time
6:07 Getting the program started two and a half years ago
7:06 The aha moment: time savings and officer safety
7:42 What shared consciousness means
8:36 Police, EMS and fire using TAK in unison
10:10 Integration and partners: a single pane of glass
11:15 Resources to get more literate with TAK
12:30 The 5 to 10 year vision for TAK in public safety
13:43 DPS's vision for TAK in Texas
15:35 Parting thought: reach out
16:17 Closing thanks

Questions answered in this episode

What is TAK and how does it help first responders?

Brandon Alberd says TAK places your resources and people on one map, whether that's personnel, fleet vehicles, equipment, or drones. All that can fit on one map and you can share that information with a lot of people all at once.

Hear it at 2:05

How does TAK save time during emergency operations?

A pilot describing where something is in real time can take 15 to 20 minutes. In TAK, that pilot can drop a pin on a map and responders can go straight to that location in seconds. Taking snapshots instead of describing objects like a backpack saves another 10 to 15 minutes.

Hear it at 4:50

What types of data can be integrated into TAK?

Brandon Alberd says planning documents, map overlays, shapes, and known points of interest can be added. Fleet vehicle data can be pulled from systems like Esri. TAK integrates with most systems by talking to vendors or developers about a tie-in.

Hear it at 2:44

Can Texas agencies use the state's TAK server for free?

Yes. Brandon Alberd says DPS is offering TAK as a free service to agencies that don't have resources to stand up their own server, as long as they can gain access through a LEAP account or other means, because everyone working off the same sheet of music is valuable.

Hear it at 13:54

How does TAK help track personnel outside their vehicles?

Brandon Alberd explains that most systems track vehicles, but once officers step out, responders don't know where they are anymore. TAK is something you can throw in your pocket, turn it on and forget it, which is important for officer safety.

Hear it at 7:08

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 215 transcript

Unified Vision: TAK Transforming Public Safety Response with Brandon Alberd

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Brandon Alberd

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a 20-episode mini-series at the Texas Robotics Summit, hosted by our friends at Granite Defense. We dive into the evolving world of drones and robotics in public safety aviation. Through 20 fantastic conversations with leaders across public safety, from the fire service, law enforcement, EMS operations, wildlife management, and more, we explore the challenges, investments in the critical role of technology in enhancing emergency services operations. A special thanks to the sponsor of the Smart Firefighting podcast, W.S. Darley & Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. We are live here in the first afternoon session here on day two alongside Brandon Alberd, the program manager of Texas TAK. Brandon, welcome. How you doing?

[0:54] Brandon Alberd: All right, man. Thank you.

[0:56] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for being here. So this is I think the ninth podcast, you know, I'm shooting for 25, maybe 30, we'll see. But it's been quite an experience seeing a lot of tech in the field and talking with all the different amazing stakeholders here. But in your words, what's going on here, the Texas Robotics Summit? And why is this an important event that you've now attended for the third year in a row?

[1:17] Brandon Alberd: Yes. So this year, you know, we were invited out, the ranch has put up some infrastructure to help with offline communication and interoperability. So we were asked to come out and kind of give a briefing of what TAK is and just how it can help during operations.

[1:39] Kevin Sofen: And I've heard the word TAK quite a bit in the realm of public safety more and more recently. And actually our most listened to podcast in 2023 was with AJ Johannesen from Corona FD. And I think the word TAK is becoming more commonplace but I still think there's a lot of people or if you said, hey, what is TAK, raise your hand, maybe 20% of the room would raise their hand, at least on the public safety side. But in your words, in layman's terms, and maybe even get a little nerdy, what is TAK?

[2:05] Brandon Alberd: I mean, just the most basic way in the way that I tell our troops is, it places your resources and your people on one map, right? So whether that's the people themselves, that's your fleet vehicles, that's Seaburn equipment, you name it, your drones, All that can fit on one map and you can share that information with a lot of people all at once.

[2:28] Kevin Sofen: And tell me more about kind of like the data creation side, getting data from somewhere and getting it onto a map to create that shared consciousness. Tell me more about kind of the data creation side or where are you getting data from?

[2:44] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, so I mean, it just depends on what the mission is. So let's just take the state capital, for example, events that we work for that. We can take, you know, any kind of data that's coming from like an EAP, something like that, you know, your planning documents, you can take that, the map overlays, you can overlay that onto your map as well. Any of your shapes, your known points of interest outside of that, if you have other equipment that you're using, you can always feed information from one system to another. So that's for us, like our fleet vehicles or whatnot. We pull that from an Esri-based system into our TAK instance. So what we've found is there's not too much that TAK doesn't integrate with. It's just a matter of talking to, you know, your vendors or the developers of that program and just asking, you know, if they can have a tie-in.

[3:38] Kevin Sofen: And what are some examples in how you've taken either private or public data creation tools and now been able to show that onto a map and, you know, any sort of early wins or success stories that you've got?

[3:52] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, sure, so again, using the capital for example, being able to take that because the one thing that we see is there's an event or there's an emergency, what have you. Five different agencies respond to that event and they're gonna bring five different tools, right? So having TAK, having something that we can all share because we're pretty much gonna plan together for the most part, you know, but being able to place all that into one platform that then you can share with the QR code or something of that nature, you know, makes that super beneficial. It saves a lot of time. That's the biggest win. And honestly, the reason why I love TAK so much is the time savings that you get with it.

[4:36] Kevin Sofen: Tell me more about that from aspects of saving time. That seems to be a common theme of the Texas Robotics Summit and how drones in different ways can save you time, that even TAK has this common operating platform. How does TAK save time?

[4:50] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, take for instance, you know, you have a pilot, whether it's a drone, it's a, you know, a helo, what have you, describing where something's at, you know, in real time, it can take 15, 20 minutes, right? For a pilot to, you know, give you that 1500 foot view, walking you in on a target, to where in TAK, That pilot, as long as you know, they have tack running inside that bird can easily just drop a pin on a map and you can just blow it down straight to that. You know, something that used to take 15, 20 minutes of describing is now a matter of seconds, right? On the other side of it, being able to take snapshots and not having to describe something as simple as what a Jansport backpack looks like, right? Being able to take that snapshot and place that on the map and now, you know, share that out, that's another 10, 15 minutes that you're not describing, you know, what it looks like and where it's at on the map.

[5:47] Kevin Sofen: I mean, it seems almost so basic and rudimentary.

[5:51] Brandon Alberd: It is, very.

[5:52] Kevin Sofen: And then yes, from the state sense of like, you've told me about some use cases and value attack. I mean, what's the adoption rate like and kind of what's the acceptance and are you seeing the more and more users across Texas and in the country as a whole?

[6:07] Brandon Alberd: We are in the past, so we started, about two and a half years ago. And I mean, I won't lie, it was a little rough getting it started just because once again, you're dealing with, you know, quote unquote, you know, tracking, right, people don't like sharing their locations, but what I found is, you know, if you take the time to describe what this platform is and what it's not and how to use it properly, and you know, this is what not going to do with this program. That's helping with adoptions and then just going out and sharing this information and showing how we use it to other agencies or other you know we're a state agency so going out and sharing it with all the other regions and letting them have that aha moment you know because it's going to be different for every person every use case but letting them have that aha moment that's when you're going to see a successful adoption and people actually using this tool.

[7:05] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. What was your aha moment with TAK?

[7:08] Brandon Alberd: So mine, once again, for me, it's always going to come back down to time saving, right? Time saving and officer safety is the two biggest things because the one problem that we have in public safety, you know, we know where our vehicles are at most of the time, right? There's CAD systems out there that specialize in that. But once those officers step out of that vehicle, we don't know where they're at anymore, right? So having this, it's something that you can just throw into your pocket and for most, it's just turn it on and forget it, right? Just having that is what's crucial to me.

[7:42] Kevin Sofen: I mentioned it and we talked about it before the podcast, but that term of shared consciousness and the ability to having different stakeholders across different boundary lines, being able to have this idea of shared consciousness in your terms, in your words, what does that term mean?

[7:58] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, shared consciousness to me is just, you know, The ability to whiteboard and what's important to you and things of that nature, and then being able to share that. In tack, it's a matter of putting a dot on a map and then two to three clicks later, it's on your buddy's screen as well. So having that, and that could be something that saves lives as well. Again, going back to the backpack thing, that could be nothing to most people, right? We see backpacks every day, but that could be that one thing. there could be an explosive or something in there, right? And being able to share that out, I think, is worthwhile.

[8:36] Kevin Sofen: And I'm fortunate today, we've had police, we've had EMS, we've had fire on here. Does TAK cover all public safety? And any example in Texas and how you're seeing police law, EMS in particular, sort of all using it in unison?

[8:52] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, Texas is a pretty big state. We have a little bit of everything. Down south, we have border ops happening, in which we include other agencies, border patrol, and we're starting to adopt some sea stuff as well with the Coast Guard. So we don't have a complete answer of what that's gonna look like, but it's communication that's happening and some systems that, to my knowledge, has not happened yet intact. Up north right now, we have the fires going on. So being able to share out mission search, temporary search, if you will, with our other partners in helping keep track of resources up there so that we don't lose personnel or equipment during that time. On the EMS side at the Capitol, again, just knowing where our apparatuses are at during an event and once those medics step out of that vehicle, where did they go, right? So yeah, I mean, we don't have the answer yet, but we're working on it, right? And what it takes is just partnering events like, you know, this event here to where we have a little bit every everything that comes out, having these talks and, you know, just, hey man, why don't you just try it and let's see what happens. And if you like it, then let's talk about what the future looks like for that.

[10:10] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and you've mentioned a few times, integration and different types of partners. And there's a range of different listeners here on the podcast, but one in particular is definitely some of the entrepreneurs, the emerging companies from other industries. What would be your message to some of the data creators, some of the software integrators, and just maybe some technology from other industries and how they should be thinking and approaching trying to integrate with an attack ecosystem to collaborate with someone like yourself or Texas DPS.

[10:44] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, so I mean, one thing that I find to be attractive is just having that single pane of glass, right? We can have multiple tools, there's nothing wrong with that, but having that one tool that everybody knows that they can go to. I would say to a lot of people out there, if you haven't heard of TAK yet, and you have anything that does with, you know, putting dots on a map, one of the things that you should be looking into is an integration into TAK and sharing some of that caught data into TAK.

[11:14] Kevin Sofen: And good notes. And I guess on that, I actually, fortunately I interviewed Ryan McLean from the TAK Product Center just the other week. I mean, would that be a place to look or where would you, what events or kind of what resources would you suggest any sort of aspiring TAK enthusiast to maybe get more literate with TAK?

[11:32] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, so the TAK Product Center, that's a great resource. Those guys, you know, from my understanding are the ones who created it, you know, some 15, 16 years ago. So they definitely know what they're talking about. But I mean, you can find online sources everywhere. I mean, you can look on Reddit. I have Reddit pages that I follow all the way down to places like Discord. There's Discord channels out there, you know. So finding this information, it's not that hard. The one thing that I have found is just Googling it though. It is rather new to the public safety in the civilian world. So there's not a lot out there. So, but yeah, once you get in to any of those communities, we're all pretty tied together earlier. You mentioned AJ Johansson. So he created the tech syndicate last year before. So that's another good one. He's on YouTube with that. Definitely a good place to go and check out what he's, he's publishing.

[12:26] Kevin Sofen: Shout out AJ. I think all TAK roads kind of lead back to that guy. He is, he's the TAK guru. Yeah, I love that guy. Well thanks AJ for that. So it's March 2024. What are you excited about, you know, the rest of this year and maybe even if you have like a 5-10 year vision type thing of TAK and public safety?

[12:44] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, so one is just getting the word out there, right, and seeing this thing grow because, you know, it is a DoD tool. It came from the DoD, right, and you look at it and you can see it is a DOD tool. The more of us that get into this and the more voices and agencies that can put effort towards this is where we're going to get our voice to grow this thing to be a public safety tool. So I'm looking forward to that. Last year here in Texas, we had a great year for just getting the word out to agencies a little bit everywhere. It was a very busy year for me. Seeing that grow and now creating more, I guess, videos and studies on how to advance it from here, that's something that I'm looking forward to. Again, now that we're working with certain DOD members down on the border, having that seaworthy, if you will, aspect to it, I think it's gonna be pretty awesome.

[13:43] Kevin Sofen: And just to kind of try and double back to my question a little bit of what's your vision for TAK in Texas in the next couple years and from where we're at now and to ultimately where you think it can go in a few years?

[13:54] Brandon Alberd: Yeah, so one thing that DPS is doing, we understand that not a lot of agencies have the resources really to stand up their own server, they don't have the IT department, whatever. We are offering this as a free service. We don't charge you anything as long as you can gain through a LEAP account or some other means, and we can specify that later. We wanna be able to produce that to you because in our eyes, being able to have everyone working off the same sheet of music, I think is gonna be valuable.

[14:31] Kevin Sofen: That's awesome. And just to expand on that a little bit, so you're saying that basically anyone, any department that FireLiar EMS can join the tax server within Texas and use that to start kind of figuring out how they can better accomplish the mission?

[14:44] Brandon Alberd: Exactly. Yeah.

[14:46] Kevin Sofen: So what would that look like?

[14:47] Brandon Alberd: I mean, honestly, we don't quite have the answer. So one thing that we have built out is, you know, different types of channels, things of that nature. And so one that we have is a fire channel, right? So any fire service can pop into there and, you know, work together up north. You know, right now for, the fires, we have interrupt channels for different types of events. So we don't quite have the answer. We are coming from a policing background, but we're interested in what that's gonna look like, right? And there's only one way to do that, and that's to get people sitting at a table with us.

[15:23] Kevin Sofen: Try on there and figure it out. Pretty much. Man, I appreciate what you're doing to help kind of empower the little ones, give them a chance to be able to still have resources to do what they need to do.

[15:34] Brandon Alberd: Absolutely.

[15:35] Kevin Sofen: So this is a little bit of a wild card, but the idea of a little bit of a mic drop of sorts of, curious if you have any favorite quote, a challenge, a question, or any sort of statement if you could leave us with any kind of final parting words here today.

[15:49] Brandon Alberd: I mean, really, it's just, you know, reach out. I mean, honestly, we want to be able to talk to as many people as we can. I would love to have conversations with as many people as possible. So reach out to us. My email, do you mind?

[16:03] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, please.

[16:04] Brandon Alberd: My email reaches at pss.dps.texas.gov. If you have questions about TAK, If you're interested in joining our servers, if you're a Texas agency, by all means, come talk to us.

[16:17] Kevin Sofen: You heard it from Brandon here, so reach out. I'll make sure to put that in the show notes. And Brandon, it's just really cool to see how you continue to leverage the best available technology to help all of Texas and really all of America's public safety efforts. So kudos to you, keep doing what you're doing, and I look forward to staying in touch.

[16:33] Brandon Alberd: All right, man, thank you.

[16:34] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in to this miniseries created at the Texas Robotics Summit, posted by Granite Defense. Make sure to put this amazing event on your calendar for 2025. For this podcast episode, what'd you like? What'd you think? Drop us a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do and have a great day ahead.