Rich messaging on mobile phones keeps door staff alert to trouble

(24/09/2008)

Ever wondered why many of Britain's doormen and women wear a mobile phone on their hip, in its holster? Apart from the off-chance that they need to call the police or an ambulance to an incident, that is?

Well it may actually be that the mobile phones in the hands of your friendly door staff are helping them to do their difficult job, thanks to UK-developed mobile instant messaging technology.

City-watch/pub is a mobile phone-based information service that links members of the scheme with photos and incident information to increase the safety, security and comfort of customers. Using city-watch/pub, door and bar staff use mobile phones to take and share photos – and verbal descriptions - of people involved in abusive, violent or destructive behaviour instantly with all the other members of a local pubwatch scheme.

The photos enable door staff identify troublemakers before they gain access to a venue, or around a city centre, and can help to prevent problem behaviour moving between pubs and clubs throughout the night.

The advantages of city-watch/pub over the traditional walkie-talkie way of doing things is that it does away with the problems of 'talkover' and missed messages - with an instant message retrieval capability a part of the package. And, of course, there is no way for a walkie-talkie to send a picture or text. And, where police authorities are prepared to participate in the scheme, city-watch/pub users set up an Emergency Arrest Request facility. This instantly distributes photos not only to pubwatch members but also to registered police phones or control centres.

Behind all the picture-sharing there is a powerful database that, over time, helps pubwatch members proactively to exclude troublemakers. Every time an incident photo is submitted, the details and image are recorded on the database so the profile of incidents can be analysed in detail. Patterns of behaviour can be identified and predicted, and times when incidents are most likely to kick off may be identified - as well as simply counting up the number of incidents.

The database also uses the latest mapping technology, to help identify trouble hotspots and show patterns of how incidents can move between areas over the course of a night.

It all helps to link staff that witness different incidents in different places on different days or weeks – ensuring that those involved in repeat incidents are identifiable. And, of course, the data gives the police much of the information that they need to devise effective policing strategies and determine the best placement of resources – where and when they need to be.

Although the database behind city-watch/pub is quite sophisticated, the most visible element is the mobile instant messaging. To be more specific, the technology is rich messaging – 'rich' because it means people can send vocal instant messages and picture messages, as well as the standard text-based instant message.

The rich messaging technology itself comes from Palringo, a Newcastle-based company. Palringo effectively turns standard mobiles and PCs into two-way radios, using the internet as a data carrier. In fact, it might be better described as enhanced two-way radio, thanks to Palringos voice and picture messaging capabilities. Palringo uses ordinary mobile handsets, and is entirely operator-independent.

Andrew Parkes, strategic director for city-watch, said: "Typically, door and night staff used to capture evidence of anti social behaviour by taking a picture of the incident with their mobile phones and sending a MMS pict message to a control centre. The control centre, in turn, relayed details to other door staff and night watchmen in the surrounding areas, via walkie-talkie. This was neither a cost effective nor an efficient way of dealing with these kinds of situations. Speed is usually of the essence, as well as a correct description of the people involved."

"Using Palringo's technology, these problems are solved. Real time information is now sent to everyone who is part of a particular city watch group, meaning every doorman, every night watchman has not only have visual confirmation of the suspect within seconds of the incident, but can also send voice messages to each other letting the whole group know what's happening in real time. For us, the technology means we've been able to cut out the control centre, reducing costs that we've been able to pass onto our customers".

Kerry Ritz, CEO of Palringo, said: "Rich messaging mirrors the way that way people like to communicate - in words, pictures and text – so applications using it are limited only by people's imagination. Think of venue security like city-watch/pub, of home surveillance, for educational purposes in schools or on field trips, by field engineers requesting a fault diagnosis… rich messaging is useful for individuals, of course, but a great deal of business communications consist of messaging of just the sort in which Palringo specialises."

"Rich messaging isn't just another way for mobile-toting 'yoof' to communicate: 8% of the world's mobile owners already use mobile instant messaging, and up to 25% in some countries. It is a great way to communicate, for pleasure or, increasingly, for distributed businesses," he added.

Related topics:  Security guarding   Surveillance 

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