Siemens to re-direct Italian fire and rescue

Siemens has scooped a €32m deal to provide state-of-the-art command and control centres for Italy's national fire and rescue service.

The deal comes shortly after the German firm completed a similar system for Italy's national paramilitary police force, the Carabinieri.

Siemens Business Services will equip 16 regional and 100 provincial command and control centres with hardware, software, GPS technology and new telephone exchanges that can handle both radio and telephony.

The system will allow the command centres to give emergency crews precise directions to any incident and to relay any details about it to the crews' mobile computers or PDAs as it is received.

Siemens will be responsible for maintaining the IT infrastructure, equipping vehicles with GPS systems and for training the fire and emergency crews to use the new systems.