Terms of Reference of Special Committee (SC) on Emergency Communications  (EMTEL) 

Approved at Board#110 (December 2016) 

General

SC EMTEL shall report directly to the ETSI Board.

Responsibility

The SC EMTEL shall have primary responsibility to:

• subject to the participation in SC EMTEL, solicit and capture the requirements from the stakeholders (including National Authorities responsible for provisioning emergency communications, End Users, the European Commission, Communication Service Providers, network operators, manufacturers and other interested parties).

• The scenarios to be considered include communication (others to be added if required with Board approval):
  
  
  
  
  • of individuals with authorities/organisations,
  • between authorities/organisations,
  • from authorities/organisations to the individuals,
  • amongst individuals,

• develop a consensus amongst the stakeholders and reflect this in requirement documents, which will be used by the technical bodies of SDOs. This will address both operational and technical needs,

• input requirements, by request or EMTEL initiated, to all concerned TB's on definition and optimization of the generic network architectures that will support horizontal integration of different standards under a common umbrella of requirements for EMTEL,

• provide requirements on issues of network security, network integrity, network behaviour in emergency situations, and emergency telecommunications needs in networks,

• take the lead for the interface between ETSI and CEC/EFTA and other pertinent bodies, e.g. 3GPP, ITU, the CEPT ECC, CEN and CENELEC, Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) in conjunction with the ETSI Secretariat, with respect to emergency communications issues,

• ensure that the requirements that it has approved are taken into account by the relevant TB’s in conjunction with the OCG,

• co-ordinate the ETSI positions on EMTEL related issues.

Deliverables

SC EMTEL may create and approve Technical Specifications and Technical Reports. Other deliverable types may be created, subject to prior authorization by the Board, on a case-by-case basis.

Areas of activity

The activities of SC EMTEL will follow the broad areas of:

• preparation and maintenance of ETSI deliverables used to describe requirements for Users, Network Architectures, Network Resilience, Contingency planning, Priority Communications, Priority Access Technologies and Network management;

• studies of the issues related to National Security and Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR);

• provision of mechanisms for the effective liaison between ETSI TBs and with organizations such as local, national and regional Government Authorities, the EU Commission, Civil Protection and Disaster Relief and Emergency or Security Authorities/Organisations;

• identification of relevant work outside ETSI that can assist in the stimulation of appropriate activity in ETSI TBs;

• co-operation with relevant EU projects;

• co-ordination of the setting of emergency communication requirements in order to produce a consistent set of ETSI deliverables and to undertake measures to efficiently continue and stimulate further co-ordinated public safety related work within ETSI.

SC EMTEL would also provide ETSI with a centre of expertise in the area of requirements for Emergency Communications and be able to offer advice to ETSI Technical Bodies, the ETSI Board and the General Assembly.

Participation

Participation in SC EMTEL is open to all ETSI members.

Non-member experts may participate at the discretion of the Chairman in-line with ETSI TWP clause 1.4.