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Public Safety Communications Research Division

BACKGROUND ON THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH DIVISION

Established in 2002, the Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) aims to “advance communications technologies in support of the public safety community through strategic, forward-looking research that balances near-term operational needs with long-term innovation” (Feldman et al. 2025, p. 9). To advance this objective, the division has established five technical program areas, or “research portfolios”: Mission Critical Services (MCX), User Experience (UX), Location-Based Services (LBS), Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), and the Innovation Lab. The five PSCR program areas provide services and technical expertise to the public safety community and related industries that are intended to accelerate applicability of communications technologies for public safety use cases in parallel to commercial availability for the U.S. consumer. Table 2-1 provides an overview of the objectives of each of these research portfolios. Supporting these portfolios, the PSCR’s fiscal year (FY) 2025 combined budget was $12,148,900 with a total of 32 staff (25 federal, 7 associate) (Feldman et al. 2025; PSCR 2025a).

Early PSCR work (2002–2007) focused on Land Mobile Radio (LMR). Long-Term Evolution (LTE) enabled an expansion into emerging broadband technologies from 2007 to 2012. The PSCR’s efforts accelerated with the $300 million Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program (PSIAP) funding between 2016 and 2022 and a series of UAS prize challenges from 2019 to 2025. The PSCR also works closely with the FirstNet Authority, which oversees the dedicated nationwide broadband network for first responders to support public safety and ensure connectivity during emergencies (FirstNet Authority n.d.). In this collaboration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) targets work at technology readiness levels (TRLs) of roughly 1–6 (i.e., research and development looking out 5–15 years), and FirstNet Authority targets work at TRLs 6–9 (i.e., investment and deployment into technology 0–5 years ahead). The division’s goals for the next year include utilizing new criteria for FY 2026 planning, narrowing focus, sunsetting FY 2025 projects, and maintaining alignment with FirstNet Authority.

PSCR leadership shared crisp communication technology objectives for each of the public safety community program areas, copied into Table 2-1. These objectives were used to guide this assessment.

TABLE 2-1 Overview of the Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) Research Portfolios

SOURCE: Committee generated using PSCR (2025a,b,c,d,e).

TECHNICAL PROGRAMS

The PSCR’s five research portfolios, introduced above, focus on high-importance research areas that have a clear impact on real-world public safety problems. The PSCR’s research includes both low-TRL, long-term work and high-TRL, short-term work. The PSCR has performed initial roadmapping efforts in public safety analytics research and development (R&D), user interface R&D, and location-based services R&D (Benson et al. 2017; Felts et al. 2015, 2016). The PSCR also aligns its roadmap with that of FirstNet Authority, which updated its roadmap in 2020 and 2023 in response to evolving communication challenges (CTL 2025).

NIST PSCR appears to be unique among federal laboratories working on public safety communications because of its focus on local first responders. First responders primarily operate in local contexts, which is why PSCR has leveraged relationships with FirstNet (federal perspective) and with local first responders (state and local perspective) in targeting relevant outcomes for federal, state, and local agencies. PSCR has created an ecosystem where these workers have a meaningful voice informing interdisciplinary communications research.

Examples from each research portfolio, as well as work performed under the PSIAP, are described in the following sections.

Mission Critical Services

The MCX portfolio is the most mature and strongest of the five portfolios and meets its stated objectives. The broadband mission-critical push-to-talk (PTT) modernization stands out as a PSCR success story. PTT radios are viewed as indispensable by many public safety officers. Unlike mobile phone calls, which require entering digits to initiate a voice call, PTT systems give the officer the feeling of constant connectivity because a quick button push opens a voice channel. PTT radios date back almost to the invention of radio, and public safety officers have depended on PTT provided by LMR for instant reliable communications.

The MCX and its partners were able to shepherd conformance testing through the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), develop standards-based conformance testing scripts, and transfer this work to commercial

testing and evaluation companies. This high-impact work stands out because the MCX played a critical role from inception to commercialization. The most common LMR standard in the United States involves Project 25 (P25) radios, which gained widespread use during the transition from analog to digital waveforms in the 1990s. LMR has been used for decades by both police and fire, saving numerous lives by providing connectivity in life-threatening situations. Today, P25 is an approximately 35-year-old standard that is frozen. It does not utilize the innumerable physical, medium access, and network layer improvements that have been available for around 15 years in commercial wireless broadband standards, such as 3GPP LTE. A switch to a wireless broadband network such as LTE or 5G New Radio (NR), available for around 5 years, would lower cost, improve voice performance, and provide improved spectral efficiency.

Despite the widespread availability of LTE and 5G NR, LMR is still widely used in the United States by public safety organizations, primarily resulting from a lack of trust in alternatives—for example, equivalent ruggedized devices. LMR decommissioning will depend on feature equivalency of a replacement system. One gap preventing this transition away from LMR to new technologies is reach beyond the current radio coverage. Technical solutions such as sidelink and satellite are being considered. The PSCR’s MCX portfolio has recognized this trust issue and has aimed to overcome it through a mixture of provable broadband mission-critical PTT application readiness, specification development, equipment readiness testing, and laboratory test certification.

User Experience

The User Experience (UX) group approaches its objectives (see Table 2-1) from a first responder–training point of view. Key areas of focus include augmented and virtual reality and extended reality technologies for public safety; heads-up displays, haptics, and audio cues for effective interaction; and user experience research and testing methodologies for new technologies. As an example of stakeholder engagement for user centered design and feedback, the UX team ran the “CommanDINGTech Challenge” that ended in March 2023. The UX team shared that outcomes from this event influenced future R&D directions for NIST PSCR and are incorporated into the commercial space. The UX group incorporated the learning when developing studies to take place in the Public Safety Immersive Test Center with a mock-up of an apartment in a hazardous materials situation. First responders use augmented and virtual reality equipment and 3D-printed faux test equipment to recreate a real-world setting. The mock-up laboratory has limited capacity to provide firsthand first-responder training experience. However, the UX team has significant potential to increase stakeholder impact by focusing on NIST measurement science and development of guidelines to evaluate operations of third-party products in the mockup real-world setting given the unique location measuring capabilities of NIST’s mock-up setting. NIST might consider providing guidance for first responders on requirements for purchase and deployment of systems that include the researched user experience technologies. Obtaining feedback from intended end users in a frequent and convenient manner about routine and emergency uses is key to conducting successful applied research and technology transfer.

Location-Based Services

The LBS portfolio focuses on indoor positioning, which is a long-standing engineering challenge in both commercial and government settings. For indoor mapping, tracking, and navigation, the LBS group has generated results using light detection and ranging and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. The LBS group is looking to make a major step forward in removing barriers to technology adoption with its new z-axis positioning test facility. Indoor positioning is a widely known problem that to date does not have a widespread solution. In outdoor areas, global navigation satellite systems such as the Global Positioning System can be used for accurate positioning. Public safety settings, however, require officers to enter buildings in scenarios where both the public and first responders’ lives are in danger. Global navigation satellite systems are unreliable indoors because accurate timing estimation requires line-of-sight connectivity. In a building, the existence of spatially varying relationships and unknown multipath propagation make it difficult to track officers and to radio in information. This is particularly a problem when trying to locate an object or position in height or by building floor (i.e., the z axis), especially in

disaster recovery scenarios. When the z-axis positioning facility is completed, the LBS group will be able to host organizations to support research and development, testing, and unique dataset production, and to establish clear guidelines on how to support, test, and evaluate indoor positioning solutions.

Uncrewed Aircraft Systems

To achieve its objective of advancing capabilities of uncrewed aircraft systems for emergency response operations, the UAS group functions as a competition-focused center, having sponsored eight prize competitions between 2018 and 2025. The UAS group formulates unmanned aerial challenges with set objectives and rules, which are then opened to teams across the world, with multiphase down selections and funding. The UAS group does not specify how teams design their unmanned systems other than providing broader guidelines on competition objectives. As a result, limited up-front funding for materials and supplies catalyzes large numbers of highly skilled research teams performing a significant amount of R&D for UAS, with the top-performing teams receiving additional monetary awards. The UAS portfolio is then able to harness the observations and data from these challenges to inform its outcomes.

The UAS research area appears to align well with NIST’s metrology strengths, such as the use of standardized test methods for evaluating UAS solutions from different competition teams. It has so far differentiated itself from other UAS efforts nationwide and capitalized on NIST’s strengths for sustained impact in improving first-responder UAS services. Collaboration with other UAS research initiatives, such as the National Science Foundation’s Aerial Experimentation and Research Platform for Advanced Wireless, with a focus on PSCR use cases, may help to accelerate capability for first responders. Still, drone detection and tracking is an emerging use case that is top of mind for national security, critical infrastructure, DOW, and disaster recovery situational awareness. The 5G/6G telecommunications network’s Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) capability is being standardized now for multi-vendor interoperability. PSCR could consider applying best practices in UAS metrology to the drone detection and tracking use case which would have relevance beyond the current public safety mission. Addressing 5G/6G ISAC capability for first responder communications technology, and standards and metrology for UAS communications technology could be opportunities for new or increased cross-division collaboration. For example, MCX in collaboration with the Radio Frequency Technology Division (RFTD) could influence standards development of sensing APIs for public safety, and LBS and MCX could collaborate with the RFTD to develop ISAC-enabled location sensors for first responders.

Innovation Lab

The Innovation Lab supports the computing, networking, and radio needs of the other PSCR portfolios and CTL divisions. It operates LMR systems from multiple vendors and an LTE base station deployed at a test range, and it maintains a van outfitted with a radio tower for drive testing and high-elevation outdoor deployments. The Innovation Lab also contains fully functional systems necessary to exercise system interoperability, including

• A 4G/5G cellular network system,
• A P25 phase 1 and 2 LMR system,
• Radio frequency (RF) chambers for testing devices,
• A mission-critical Voice Quality of Experience system, and
• A mobile research vehicle for field measurements.

Per the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, communications systems are operational technology, and the Innovation Lab operates under a NIST Authority to Operate in accordance with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act. The breadth of laboratory capabilities and ability to work with NIST’s information technology department and other government agencies to meet the PSCR’s radio test capabilities indicate that the Innovation Lab is achieving its stated objectives.

PUBLIC SAFETY INNOVATION ACCELERATOR PROGRAM

As mentioned above, the PSCR received $300 million in public safety trust funds through the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act from 2016 to 2022 and established the PSIAP. To expand research breadth, the PSCR used PSIAP funds to capitalize on the expertise of researchers nationwide and outside the United States in the form of grants and prize challenges. Of the $300 million public safety trust funds, $108.76 million was used to provide external grants to other researchers, and $5.3 million was used for prize challenges (246 winning teams among 20 challenges), with $8.1 million having been spent to date, including Scientific and Technical Research and Services funds made available following the close of the $300 million supporting two additional challenges. The PSCR funding also supported a relatively small number of distinct non-U.S. participants with complementary expertise, but inclusion of a U.S. partner in the prize challenge team was a requirement for funding.

SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE

The PSCR’s expertise across the portfolio of projects in the MCX, the UX, the LBS, the UAS, and the Innovation Lab supports its objectives reasonably well. The MCX’s success in taking the broadband mission-critical PTT from an unsolved engineering and standardization problem to a final technology transfer stood out to the panel among the PSCR portfolios. While the UX staff is adequately supporting its technical programs, the portfolio could benefit from additional staff to support a test and evaluation setup for commercial partners. Similarly, the LBS group could better confront the numerous unsolved problems in signal processing and engineering with a larger team of researchers with expertise in areas such as RF propagation, optics, signal processing, radar, imaging, and communications. The UAS group operates much differently than the other portfolios, borrowing organization and management models aligned more closely to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grand Challenges.

Across research portfolios, approximately 8 percent of the PSCR federal employees have a PhD, which is relatively low compared to the Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL) average of 47 percent. This discrepancy can be attributed to some extent to the applied nature of the work at the PSCR, which requires close engagement with the first-responder community. Adding more PhD researchers with relevant backgrounds in applied research could contribute to research depth led by the PSCR and accelerate adoption of critical communication capabilities for first responders via enhanced cross research portfolio collaboration. Nonetheless, the PSCR produces many publications (75 out of 384 total publications for the CTL from 2022 to 2025, amounting to 19.5 percent), which is commendable. As further testament to its high-impact work, the PSCR received a 2023 Gold Medal from the Department of Commerce for “development and execution of a $300 million intramural and extramural R&D program that enabled the advancement of critical public safety communications technology,” where funds were used to “pioneer technological innovation, accelerate cutting-edge communications research, and set critical communications standards” (NIST n.d.).

The infusion and then expiration of PSIAP funding required the PSCR to expand and then downsize its personnel, from 9 federal staff and 21 associates in 2015, to 38 federal staff and 40 associates in 2020, down to 25 federal staff and 7 associates in 2025. This short-term scaling up and scaling down of staff may have impacted PSCR’s ability to assemble a more diverse team of MS and PhD researchers in areas such as communications, sensing, control, augmented reality, and computer science. Consequently, the PSCR appears to have limited ability to adequately formulate and address the myriad public safety R&D challenges within its remit. It is surprising that the organization has achieved such great impact with such a small headcount.

FACILITIES, EQUIPMENT, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

Facilities, equipment, and human resources support the needs of the PSCR’s technical programs and assist the division in achieving its stated objectives. The PSCR’s facilities stood out as a major positive feature for the division. For example, as introduced above, the LBS portfolio is building a stairwell outfitted with an infrared system for high-accuracy (x,y,z) indoor positioning. This state-of-the-art z-axis positioning test facility will provide unique capabilities for conducting z-axis testing at a subcentimeter resolution in a tightly controlled environment (i.e., for

indoor location-based services). If successfully completed and marketed to outside groups, the LBS facilities will have significant impact on solving the public safety indoor positioning problem and could be used by both NIST and outside organizations for testing.

The PSCR portfolios have excellent equipment, which is likely a result of the past $300 million investment through Public Safety Immersive Test Center PSIAP. The Innovation Lab provides access to radio networks and measurement capabilities that meet or exceed those of any top research-focused organization. Multiple portfolios utilize infrared positioning cameras for ground-truth or augmented and virtual reality work. The portfolios seem to have adequate computing capabilities.

The Innovation Lab has the responsibility to secure operation of the equipment, including equipment for interoperability, which requires systems to be kept reasonably current. The maintenance of public safety systems—including hardware and software fees and the services to perform upgrades—requires significant funding. A plan for maintenance of equipment that is grounded with stakeholder requirements and funding sources is needed.

The PSCR currently faces a cultural change from administering grants and prize challenges to performing early TRL work. Between 2022 and 2023, with the expiration of PSIAP funding, the PSCR underwent a major transition, having to juggle priorities and transition smoothly to end projects, decrease team size, and maintain researcher morale. The division has succeeded in its transition, including upholding the morale of remaining employees, and the PSCR leadership is commended for maintaining a strong program in such a difficult situation. The PSCR could be strengthened by increasing the organization’s staff to a level where a holistic and multifaceted public safety research program could be conducted.

EFFECTIVENESS OF DISSEMINATION OF PROGRAM OUTPUTS

Stakeholder Engagement

The PSCR prioritizes involving public safety stakeholders, as evidenced by its innovation summit, close collaboration with FirstNet, and community outreach. The division was founded on stakeholder input, with past stakeholder events charting the work done today. The division currently works with stakeholders in multiple ways, including conferences and other convenings, roadmapping activities, surveys, and interviews. The PSCR’s “5×5: The Public Safety Innovation Summit” (5×5 Summit) draws public safety organizations, equipment manufacturers and industry innovators, academia, and federal government partners from around the United States and across the world and is an example for how other NIST laboratories and divisions can transfer their research outputs, identify new problems, and advertise their work.

The PSCR has leveraged insights from its stakeholders in developing its roadmap. Between 2015 and 2017, they met with companies, universities, and agencies to collect input for their roadmapping exercises. The PSCR also held follow-up workshops and roundtables between 2018 and 2024, which resulted in a variety of published NIST reports on highly mobile deployable networks, Internet of Things, wildland–urban fire response, cybersecurity and AI risk management in UAS, and mission-critical voice. The PSCR also performed a comprehensive survey of communication technology experiences with more than 7,000 participants from the first-responder community and published the findings in a 2022 NIST report (Pintar et al. 2022). Subsequently, NIST held more than 80 semistructured interviews with the incident response community (fire, law, emergency medical services, dispatch) with around 93 hours of interview time, which revealed that open problems can be explained by three factors: budget and logistics, technological needs, and information gaps.

Several stakeholder engagement activities within individual research portfolios are worth highlighting. The MCX staff identified stakeholder concerns that were serving as a barrier for adoption of public safety mobile broadband. They then worked with partners to get conformance testing through 3GPP and later transition it to commercial partners. This serves as the best example of working with end users, commercial manufacturers, network operators, and international standardization bodies. In addition, as described above, the UAS group conducts unmanned vehicle challenges with competitors from around the globe. These challenges integrate stakeholder use cases into short development cycle unfunded tests, giving stakeholders quick experimental feedback. The UX staff

has conducted numerous interviews and other training laboratory interactions with fire departments throughout the United States.

At the division level, the PSCR convenes an annual 2-day meeting for its leadership—including portfolio leads and program managers—to track impact, project objectives, partnerships, and engagements. The PSCR executed four rounds of a 12-week commercialization accelerator program for 34 emerging technology companies that support the public safety and first-responder sectors. Among the 28 participants in the first three cohorts, 16 have received follow-on funding from external agencies and the private sector, in amounts totaling over $27 million, which is a notable success (data are still being collected for the fourth cohort). The PSCR also works closely with FirstNet Authority, meeting annually to discuss alignment between objectives.

The priorities for stakeholder engagement have been shifting because the PSIAP grant money has ended. The PSCR has been focusing on more structured collaborations with the community. The staff plan to meet stakeholders to conduct portfolio workshops and update their roadmap. The PSCR currently has nine active Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) partners and two Memorandum of Understanding partners for close collaborations. Some CRADA partners, both past and in development, have previously worked with the PSCR as past grant awardees, showing the impact of past engagements through PSIAP funding. Because the PSCR works closely with stakeholders, it closely monitors stakeholder use and impact. The only way to improve this would be to substantially increase the staffing.

Dissemination and Technology Transfer

The PSCR is very effective at dissemination and technology transfer despite its small size. Its dissemination includes traditional mechanisms and nontraditional approaches—with laboratory tours; roundtables and workshops; working groups; CRADAs; external events and conferences; grants and prize challenges; and its annual flagship event, the 5×5 Summit. The 5×5 Summit has drawn up to 600 attendees in years past. It involves a broader stakeholder community and features presentations and technical demonstrations of developed technologies by the PSCR and FirstNet Authority staff and partners, including the PSCR grantees and prize challenge awardees. Participants have noted that the quality of the event has been improving each year. The PSCR has funded a large number of academic institutions, as indicated in its award recipient database (CTL n.d.) https://www.nist.gov/ctl/pscr/funding-opportunities/award-recipient-database). The PSCR also has a good record of technology transfer, having supported partners in advancing their prototypes toward commercialization by pairing them with subject-matter experts about topics such as building financial projections, assessing their team and human resources plans toward growth, and creating and refining their business pitches and other business growth strategies. An independent economic analysis examined the impact of the $230 million investment in the form of the PSCR grants, prize challenges, small business innovation research, and internal research between FY 2016 and FY 2020, finding that they generated 4,280 jobs and $513 million in total economic output (Nadeau et al. 2021). Using the same algorithm to analyze additional investments made as of October 2022, of the $348.8 million invested, the PSCR has generated 6,043 jobs and $807.1 million in total economic output.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The PSCR-focused conclusions and recommendations are based on the judgement of the panel regarding the alignment of the material presented during the assessment with the PSCR objectives presented in Table 2-1. The panel recognizes the relevance of the public safety mission in the context of the broader national security mission. Thus, recommendations primarily address amplification, dissemination, and acceleration.

Conclusion 2-1: The Mission Critical Services (MCX) portfolio is the most mature and strongest of the five Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) portfolios. The MCX and its partners were able to shepherd conformance testing through the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), develop standards-based conformance testing scripts, and transfer this work to commercial testing and evaluation companies. This high-impact work stands out because the MCX played a critical role from inception to commercialization.

The MCX portfolio has prioritized forging partnerships and achieving impactful outcomes. The activities of the portfolio have helped make Long-Term Evolution and 5G New Radio–based first-responder networks viable alternatives to traditional Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems. However, lack of trust and feature parity have slowed the decommissioning of LMR systems. The MCX portfolio also deals with complicated and evolving standards, and they could play a key role in guiding first-responder radio and network evaluation. What the PSCR has been able to accomplish with very little resources is not only impressive but may be a best practice to replicate.

Recommendation 2-1: When developing the next evolution of the Mission Critical Services research beyond conformance, the Public Safety Communications Research Division leadership should add or update research on the minimum feature parity necessary for first-responder agencies to trust the transition from Land Mobile Radio to newer technologies. Examples include trust in the ruggedized device and reach beyond radio coverage (e.g., via satellite or device to device mechanisms).

Conclusion 2-2: The User Experience (UX) portfolio has made a focused effort at creating a realistic scenario for first-responder training via mock-up of an apartment in a hazardous materials situation. Training techniques like this hold much potential for improving the way first responders are trained nationwide, but the number of first responders who can directly benefit from the NIST environment is limited. The impact of the UX portfolio could be increased by broadening its focus toward dissemination of learning, e.g., to assist with measurement sciences, standards development, guidelines for adoption of critical communications capabilities for first responders, and interface specifications for reusable datasets.

Recommendation 2-2: To amplify the potential impact for society, the Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) leadership should require each project, for example the User Experience portfolio’s mock-up training environment, to specify the anticipated amplification outcomes in all four PSCR research value areas as appropriate:

1. Measurement sciences,
2. Standards development,
3. Accelerating the adoption of critical communication capabilities for first responders, and/or
4. Reusable datasets.

Conclusion 2-3: One of the challenges for Land Mobile Radio transition to newer 5G/xG technologies was trust in the device. There is a need for focused basic research on public safety radios within the United States; the Public Safety Communications Research Division could be the leading U.S. research and development organization on this topic if it was properly resourced. For example, the Location-Based Services group could better confront the numerous unsolved problems in signal processing and engineering in indoor adverse situations with a larger team of researchers with expertise in areas such as RF propagation, optics, signal processing, radar, imaging, and communications. The Mission Critical Services (MCX) team could lead the evolution of MCX application programming interfaces to take advantage of Integrated Sensing and Communications.

Recommendation 2-3: The Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) leadership should increase the ratio of personnel with PhDs to expand its research depth. Given the PSCR’s success in connecting with relevant stakeholder feedback, hiring more PhD researchers with diverse backgrounds may help to accelerate application of new technologies, such as integrated sensing and communications, for PSCR community use cases while also addressing the device trust concerns expressed by stakeholders.

Conclusion 2-4: There is significant maintenance cost to keep current each Public Safety Innovation Lab subsystem (Project 25 Land Mobile Radio [LMR] systems from two companies, 4G/5G systems, radio frequency chambers, interoperability systems between LMR and Long-Term Evolution, Mission-Critical Voice Quality of Experience system, and Mobile Research Vehicle). A better understanding of the projects and active grant

proposals dependent on each subsystem is needed to better understand the business tradeoff between the maintenance cost of each system and relevance of the system for the Public Safety Communications Research Division mission moving forward.

Recommendation 2-4: To make a business decision on when to decommission each Public Safety Innovation Lab system, the Public Safety Communications Research Division leadership should analyze the cost to keep each system current and its ability to allocate these costs to ongoing research projects and future grant awards. The visibility to the dependencies and maintenance costs should be shared with stakeholders.

Conclusion 2-5: The Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) aims to play a key role nationally in guiding public safety radio development, radio evaluation, radio testing, first-responder training, and new technology integration. Research and development in these areas could also impact commercial radio networks and training and communication systems in other industries (e.g., mining, oil and gas, railways). The PSCR prioritizes interaction with targeted stakeholders, and stakeholder use of the PSCR infrastructure, outcomes, and guidelines appears well monitored. The PSCR may benefit from measuring or documenting each portfolios’ impact to the broader community, beyond the targeted stakeholders. Visibility to indirect impact may bring to the surface additional societal challenges.

Recommendation 2-5: The Public Safety Communications Research Division leadership should consider monitoring value beyond the targeted stakeholders—for example, those to whom the information was disseminated—in addition to monitoring stakeholder value. For example, a mapping of potential ripple effects from dissemination of each portfolio’s outcome may highlight areas of potential cross portfolio collaboration need.

REFERENCES