PEMEA is a fast evolving suite of specifications with new capabilities being added to meet new needs. This document is designed to make it easy for agencies requiring PEMEA capabilities in new systems to specify precisely what they want, by way of clearly stating functionality with references to relevant documentation and standards. Agencies writing tender documents are encourage to reference, replicate or paraphrase aspects of this document as they see fit to best ensure that their new solutions will have the capabilities they need to support emergency services in the years to come.
The ETSI PEMEA specification TS 103 478 provides all the detailed technical information necessary to build PEMEA nodes. If just want to link your PSAP into the PEMEA network or add PEMEA into your new or existing App, then you may find it easier to go through a PEMEA provider. You can find out more about using PEMEA providers here
PEMEA uses the IETF PIDF-LO (RFC 4119) data structure for conveying location information. Part of that specification allows Additional-Data to be sent by reference, and one of the Additional-Data sets is the SubscriberInfo (RFC 7852). There are no two ways about it, the SubscriberInfo is a horrible data structure. The PEMEA specification tried to profile it to help with implementation interoperability, but the truth of the matter is, that the format just isn’t really fit for purpose. So, during the course of project NEXES a new format called UserInfo was defined. This is a JSON structure that is easy to follow and meets all of the needs of PEMEA and PSAPs. The document describes how to use the format and how to convey the format using PEMEA.
PEMEA RTT is an adaptation of the PEMEA Chat protocol so it conforms to the requirements of a real-time text protocol as laid out ITU T140. The specification has been reviewed by industry experts and supports multi-party RTT as well as the ability to send Pictograms. There are plans to take this specification to ETSI in the future.
This extension allows a PEMEA-enabled App to discover what PEMEA services are available in an area. This is crucial for people with disabilities, since not all PEMEA-enabled areas will initially support all PEMEA capabilities. Knowing what capabilities are available in advance of needing to make an emergency call means that the App and/or user can choose methods that they know will work and so save valuable time at the very start of the incident.
PEMEA Instant Messaging (Chat) protocol is going through its final stages of acceptance as a European Standard and will hopefully be published by ETSI soon as TS 103 756. This specification is largely based on the Chat protocol built and tested by multiple members of the NEXES project. It is easy to implement, supports multiple participants and can provide automatic language translation.
PEMEA Audio_Video has, so far, been implemented using WebRTC. There are two variants that have been developed and used, and, depending on how it is implemented at the server end, it is relatively easy to support all 3 from the same set of services.
The original NEXES Audio_Video, developed by the University Of Ljubljana is the simplest to implement from a client perspective as it only requires a browser. This means that the only think that is required to specified is the invocation and authentication process. The signalling is completely down to implementation in the Javascript written by the server provider.
The newer Audio_Video specification has a protocol extensions on “Consortium”, and represents the PEMEA consortium specification. This specification provides a lot more control to the clients in terms of how they do stream rendering and Audio_Video controls. It also provides a lot more control to the PSAP call-taker entity. There are plans to take this specification to ETSI in the future.
OPERATIONAL DOCUMENTS
PEMEA Approval process
All entities, AP, PSPs, PSAPs and ASPs need to have a PEMEA identifier (PEMEA-ID) for compliancy purposes (PEMEA registration). The registration procedure described in this document is based on
a trusted process dependent on peer sponsorship.
General Data Protection Regulation was put in place to protect the privacy of European citizens and it covers a lot of different aspects relating to a person, including information about the device they are using to communicate and how it connects to the network. The PEMEA GDPR conformance statement explains how various kinds of information are used and stored in the context of communications involving PEMEA. All PEMEA providers conform to the information in this document.
