Drones Downlink

Description

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex, acting also on behalf of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, are tendering to appoint a single supplier for the provision of Drone Downlink functionality. As part of the pre-market engagement we are asking suppliers to submit request for information, this will be used to help scope the Authorities specification, align budgets and determine route to market. The Competitive tender, whether this be via a framework or an open/competitive flexible opportunity will then be published in early 2026. The scope of the project is for the solution to enable the streaming of live drone images into force systems allowing any Surrey Police and Sussex Police user who has been granted permission, to view and to do so on any force device. The imagery should also be able to be streamed to respective Sussex and Surrey FRS control rooms. Requirements Summary • Live images from Drone Operators controller (HDMI output) to a location (Force Control Rooms), Anyone who has permissions to access live footage from Drones • Availability for use on multiple devices i.e. Tablets, MDTs…. • Availability across SSP (Surrey/Sussex Police) • Viewing to include Stakeholder partners i.e. Fire Rescues, Ambulance etc • Ability to integrate Single sign on (SSO) with Azure Active Directory (Surrey & Sussex Police AAD) with auditing • 9 downlinks with min 5 users concurrent per downlink • Digital encoding of video stream using H.265 encoding for transmission and storage. • Absolute minimum video resolution 720p, ideally up to 1080p • Securely store streamed footage for 30 days within the boundaries of the UK • Transmission network capacity to support a minimum of 5Mbps (for 720p video, will be higher if a higher resolution is transmitted) per downlink/per drone operator. • Ability to view live footage and to be able to “rewind” footage. • Ability to download stored footage in MPEG-4 format • Data must be secured at ASE128 in transit and AES256 at rest • The system for transmitting footage should have sufficient battery capacity to transmit for at least 3 hours • Robust audit trail to record who has viewed any live stream footage - with each action or event being linked to a user ID, device ID (IP address), date, time, and location • View live/recorded footage from drone’s cameras that can be operated in a variety of lighting levels and have infrared capability