Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability by Scott Simkin

Findings and Recommendations for Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability (MECI) Copyright ÂŠ 2007. Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, Inc.â&#x201E;˘ All rights reserved. Approved for Public Release: NCOIC March 1, 2007

Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC)

Findings and Recommendations for Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability (MECI) Responding to Complex Humanitarian Disasters (CHD)

Principal Authors, Special Contributors and Their Organizations Authors: David Aylward

Director, COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance

Jim Bound

Senior Fellow, Hewlett-Packard

Bonnie Gorsic

Technical Fellow, NCO Architecture Engineering, Boeing

Steve Gross,

Deputy Director, Center for Network Innovation, Deloitte & Touche

Walter LeGrand

Manager, Strategic and Institutional Marketing, EADS

Paul Mangione

Member, Senior Technical Staff, NCOIC

Harrison Miles

Architect, Intel

Nelson Santini

Director, Strategic Markets, DataPath

Amin Soleimani

Systems Engineer, Rockwell-Collins

John Yanosy

Chief Architect, Rockwell-Collins

Special Thanks to:

Rex Buddenberg

Professor, Naval Post Graduate School

Brian Steckler,

Professor, Naval Post Graduate School

David Lancaster

Captain, USMC

James Slife

Colonel, USAF

1.0 Executive Summary â&#x20AC;&#x153;A lack of equipment standards, inadequate funding and turf wars among federal, state and local officials have made it increasingly difficult to achieve interoperable emergency communications, a panel of "first responders" said at a House Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology Subcommittee hearing. Wisconsin State Patrol Chairman Casey Perry attributed a great deal of his problems to squabbles among states, counties and municipalities. He said more federal grant money needs to be conditional to hold state and local governments accountable for creating interoperable networks. "Each entity resists losing their share of control," Perry said. "This is the underlying root of the problems we face today." DAILY BRIEFING February 15, 2006 by Michael Martinez, National Journal's Technology Daily

1.1 Findings: Governments at every level across the globe, together with commercial industry and non-profit concerns, face a daunting set of challenges arising from the steady increase in frequency and severity of Complex Humanitarian Disasters (CHD) that affect millions of people annually. There is an urgent need for a methodology that enables dynamic coordinated response by the thousands of first responders, local, regional, national and global. Single, centralized control will never effectively coordinate the response between so many different organizations with their different roles and capabilities. The NCOIC identified the opportunity for a technology mediated capability that will serve the multitude of organizations and their responders to dynamically coordinate activities in a distributed environment. Without current and dynamically updated information about the disaster, its effects, and the status of response activities, coordination is not possible. We recognize that that the nature and protocol of the response will vary based on societal and cultural differences. Further, the maturity of the technology infrastructure and differing economic climates will yield different levels of disaster response in various geographical settings. CHDs can be natural disasters such as a tsunami or a hurricane, or a man-made disaster such as a terrorist attack. In the wake of such an event, impact and after effects illustrate major limitations in information exchange within and among agencies of government, relevant commercial concerns and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO). These effects stem from the following conditions: 1.

The disparate and often out-of-date communications systems used by the different responder communities are seldom designed, specified and acquired with interoperability in mind. There is no unifying operational architecture that includes the full range of emergency responders and the information they need to share across jurisdictions and domains - public and private.

Very few responder communities train together in realistic CHD scenarios that require and demonstrate collaboration and enable a view of a common operational picture (COP) between entities. We seldom see joint operations that simultaneously coordinate multiple entities such as police, fire, emergency medical services (EMS), hospitals, transportation, emergency management, and the National Guard.

These limitations cause delayed reaction and ineffective response to a CHD which ultimately results in injury, death, and extensive property damage – which could be mitigated by improved operational planning and employment of interoperable systems that are readily available today.

In the United States, federal, state and local government agencies lack a mobile emergency communications interoperability architecture that enables shared communication of critical information when assessing and th

responding to a disaster. More than five years after September 11 2001 those three tiers of government still struggle with sharing information. The focus has been on first responder mobile communications at the expense of (1) the broader interagency communications capabilities that aid and enable first responders and (2) the ability to rapidly restore core communication services after a disaster event. The NCOIC MECI initiative demonstrates that improved responder information interoperability across responder communities can be achieved by converging on a “Services Information Framework” that merges data from multiple sources. This creates a cogent, compelling resource for responder communities with enhanced situational awareness and acuity for rapid decision-making and direct, decisive actions. The NCOIC believes the key to understanding and achieving MECI objectives is to understand that MECI is not just about technology; rather, it is significantly about the organizational interaction at a process and protocol level. Our goal is to remove the barrier (and often excuse) of “we can’t do it technically”, so that organizations can focus on the policy issues that need to be addressed so they can share information and improve response to emergencies.

Findings and Recommendations for Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability (MECI) Copyright © 2007. Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, Inc.™ All rights reserved. Approved for Public Release: NCOIC March 1, 2007

The NCOIC is proposing that communications interoperability be seen as a multi-layer solution illustrated in Figure 1.0 below and described in the text that follows:

Figure One:

4. Communication layer - There is no communication unless there are pathways, pipes, for it. Each of the emergency response agencies has their own pipes, wired and/or wireless, which may or may not be destroyed or weakened in an emergency event. If wireless, these pathways are likely not now based on internet protocol. If wired, they are likely voice grade only. Best practices call for rapidly re-establishing pipes when they are broken, and connecting them to those that still function (i.e. from the disaster affected area to a stable, recovered or unaffected region). This will require actual and virtual “pre-positioning” of tools critical to constructing hastily formed networks. 5. Database - This single symbol represents a vast linkage of multiple data bases under the control of many parties (public and private), not just the responding agencies, that can assist responders. They may or may not have interfaces to common data protocols and messaging.

Best practices calls for interoperable access to a wide variety of information sources; this requires development of standard interfaces and cooperative security protocols for rights and permission to different types of data. 6. Agency examples - Presenting medical, fire and an NGO (Red Cross) illustrates the diversity of organizations that must interact and interoperate in the MECI network. There are many more participants with differing roles and attendant information needs; each profession must be able to assume data and voice interoperability with others in the same role and across disciplines. Best practices call for inclusive planning with all organizations that are affected and/or can contribute and defining the 72 hour enterprise for emergency communications. 7. Network Discovery layer - The nature of disasters is that devices and applications are cut off from normal networks and need to find new data “pipes”. Tools must be provided to find and assimilate isolated network components and/or subsystems. 8. Standards layer - Communicating between a wide variety of applications and agencies is most effective using standard architecture and protocols. These include standard dictionaries (terminology), messages (e.g. EDXL), and communications interfaces such as TCP/IP for Voice over IP (VoIP) the rising standard for voice communication leveraging Internet technologies. International standards are preferred; de-facto standards can limit interoperability particularly in cross-border operations. 9. Emergency IT services and applications layer - A wide variety of highly functional emergency customer applications, messaging, geographic information systems (GIS), intelligent message brokering, and voice COTS services – they are available today. These can be seen as tools that the user integrates or as services that they may subscribe to. These include capabilities like private sector IT products for emergency operations applications or Federal government sponsored services such as the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) – an information sharing portal with services like situational awareness and threat assessment. Best practices call for these tools and service's interface via open standards and are available through Shared Services. 10. Shared Services Layer - These can also be called Collaboration Services referred to in this report. There are two components: core and shared services. Shared services are tools that multiple domains will share. For example, an internet protocol radio bridge that can be shared among agencies that primarily communicate by radio. Core services are a subset - that affected all domains for in governance as well as use. They are not technology limited but, rather shared for economic investment issues or to limit redundant capabilities and centralize some core functions. The key is to have both in place, and available, in advance of disasters for “virtual pre-positioning”. Core services include: A.

Rights management and authentication – This is the repository where authenticated users can enter the rules and policies that govern emergency communications, both in advance of an event and dynamically as circumstances change. This precludes separate applications having a siloed view of the situation and enables interoperability in a shared community tool.

 Defines the policies that govern sharing of information before a disaster and what is shared after one has occurred.  Identifies which agencies can send and receive what kinds of messages.  Defines the system that ensures the veracity and validity of information that the agency is receiving and acting on.  Dynamically determines who can link communication systems together and specify the geographic area, for operation and the rules of engagement.

Agency locator and assets - This is a shared registry with information vectors and business rules for the information content that respective emergency professions need and want. It answers questions such as:  Who are the agencies?  What are their jurisdictions and incident interests?  What are the information destination URLs or telephone numbers?  What information details/data elements are required?

Core services are a new idea. There are no current COTS solutions that can be “pre-positioned” to support Hastily Formed Networks (HFNs). Best practices calls for developing, testing and deploying them for all emergency communications purposes, with special features for disaster purposes. THE REMAINDER OF THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.

“Fly Away Kits” (FlAKs) can be thought of as the emergency communications “first aid kits” that can be rolled or flown into disaster areas to fill the gaps in the Services Information Framework that were created by the effects of a particular disaster. There are complex technical challenges to enable mobile emergency communications interoperability. However, the NCOIC believes these challenges can be largely met and overcome with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology that is available today. Developments in industry and government will soon begin filling in the gaps that COTS cannot elegantly resolve today. The policies and doctrine required to instantiate hastily-formed networks (HFN) need to be created, validated and endorsed by the respective responder communities. That will ensure the readiness and capability to deploy a HFN for the critical seventy-two hour window.

1.2.1 Senate Katrina Report The focus for our project was driven by the findings of the United States Senate Report from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs from May, 2006, titled, Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared. Chapter 18, “Communications”, Chapter 19, “Lack of Situational Awareness”, Chapter 21, “Search and Rescue”, and Chapter 23, “Logistics” are analyzed in detail to describe the communications-related failures that aggravated the initial and secondary responses to the Katrina CHD. We used Katrina in general and the Senate report in particular because the data relevant to our area of study is substantially more robust than any of the other events, save 9-11. It is also our finding that all the other events experienced to a significant degree similar challenges as were experienced in the first seventy-two hours after the Katrina storm dissipated. The charts on the following pages summarize our findings by challenge area for each of the referenced chapters of the Senate Katrina report.

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1.2.1.1 The analysis of communications challenges in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 18 of the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

1.2.1.2 The analysis of the challenges to develop shared situational awareness and a common operating picture (COP) by responders to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 19 of the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

1.2.1.3 The analysis of search and rescue challenges in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 21 of the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

1.2.1.4 The analysis of logistics challenges in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 23 of the Senate report are summarized in the following chart:

1.2.1.5 The analysis of various network failures in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

The detailed analysis tables that provided the data to populate these charts and the attendant methodology for the analysis can be found in Appendix A of the complete findings and recommendations document.

1.2.2 Civil/Military Cooperation for Response to CHD The need for civil/military cooperation to deal effectively with complex humanitarian disasters (CHD) was made clear by events of recent history. Without the international civil/military responder cooperation that did take place, loss of life would undoubtedly have been much greater. An operative question is: Why isn’t there more focus and better civil/military cooperation in planning response to a CHD? One answer is that there are cultural, technical and proficiency differences between civilian and military forces responding to CHD that are as challenging as dealing with the CHD itself. The Coast Guard is in a unique position with a foot in both domains. All responders to a CHD event must quickly adapt to a dynamic chain of command and an evolving situation – this is a fundamental capability of the military especially in a large scale operations. Those dynamics in a large scale response are not the natural domain for civilian-oriented organizations – typically they operate in a narrower space. The main difference is skills and how they are focused and developed through training. The military is typically trained in Warfighting skills across a broad field of operations in areas that are foreign to their home station – emergency response skills are not in the primary curriculum. Conversely, emergency responders are typically in their native domain and they are primarily trained is disaster response skills - those responders are usually police, fire, medical, emergency management, NGO and other local or regional community organizations.

Further, civilian responder communities often do not have the resources or training needed to deal with large scale CHDs, and may not realize this fact until embroiled in the events. Military forces must be invited by civil government officials to engage, and senior federal leadership must agree. This process is often ad hoc, and can lead to further confusion. Also, the civilian leadership can change at the local, state and Federal level as the size and complexity of a disaster grows - this is also true for organizations such as the Red Cross – there are jurisdictional issues that must be resolved. A core issue is that military forces are instruments of national policies. Within the United States for example, as a matter of law and policy, Federal armed forces cannot be employed for policing activities under a restriction 1

known as “posse commitatis” meaning “power from the county”. Foresight and sensitivity to political realities must be considered when planning to deal with the imperatives in a humanitarian disaster. The best opportunity for civil/military cooperation

“A humanitarian operation using military assets must retain its civilian

complies with the

nature and character, while military assets will remain under military

guidelines issued by the United

control. The operation as a whole must remain under the overall

Nations on 20

authority and control of the responsible humanitarian organization

March 2003:

(HA). This does not infer any civilian command and control over military assets.”

For these reasons, US armed forces deployed to respond to non-US CHD usually coordinate their activities through the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in the affected nation and with the U.S. Agency for International Development. These civilian Executive departments conduct the initial coordination with the Humanitarian Agencies and other governments function as the situation dictates. Achieving effective emergency response is challenging given the sometimes competing goals of different organizations. It requires that all parties understand that the effectiveness of civil/military operations lies in the discipline and skill of those responders and that effect must not be mitigated by bureaucratic entanglements while people are suffering. Effective response to CHD depends largely on the speedy, decisive directives from senior leaders to impel actions. The NCOIC charter focuses largely on the support of National Defense and it includes the technology that reaches into the state level extensions for communications interoperability.

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed in 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act was intended to prohibit Federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The original act referred only to the United States Army. The Air Force was added in 1956, and the Navy and the Marine Corps have been included by a regulation of the Department of Defense. This law is often mentioned when it appears that the Department of Defense is interfering in domestic disturbances. The Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed October 17, 2006 (Section 1076) has effectively repealed this Act. However, limitations on the use of US military forces for domestic law enforcement remain Department of Defense policy. It is important to note that these policy restrictions on the use of military assets for law enforcement do not apply to the US Coast Guard which is, by statute, a law enforcement agency in the United States. (Source: Wikipeadia) 1

No matter what the scale is, local, national or international, all responders need to know the answers to six basic questions: What happened? Where did it happen? Who and what are available to respond? Where are they? How quickly can they get here? If they aren’t enough, how can we get more? Those are the questions that determine the breadth and scale of the disaster and what resources – civil and military – that must be brought to bear. The body of doctrine and best practices that answers these questions and thus facilitates effective civil/military response to CHD is known as Network-Centric Operations, or NCO; which is based on the more specific tenets 2

of Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) : •

A robustly networked force improves information sharing,

•

Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness,

•

Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command,

•

These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

The key to understanding this revolutionary development is that it is not just about technology but also about human behavior. A seminal thinker in NCO theory, the late Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, USN, frequently observed the word “network” is both a noun and a verb. A platform is a noun. When used as a verb, “to network,” we are talking about information movement and management, not systems. The evolution from platform-centricity to network-centricity is a shift from focusing on things to focusing on behavior. The current civilian emergency response communities are almost entirely “platform-centric”. Other than traditional law enforcement sharing of arrest records, warrants and the like, there is little or no data sharing between agencies (even of the same profession, much less across professions). American emergency response tends to be voice centric in communicating with staff and across agency lines. Information technology is widely used, but generally only for internal purposes.

Referred to by some European and Asian Ministries of Defense as network-enabled capability or NEC. nd Network Centric Warfare – Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, 2 Edition Revised, D.S. Alberts, J.J. Garstka, F.P. Stein, CCRP, 1999 4 See, e.g., Federal Communications Commissions Network Reliability and Interoperability Council VII, Focus Group 1d, December 2004, Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program: “Clearing the Air: Convergence and the Safety Enterprise”, April, 2006. 3

1.3 Recommendations: The NCOIC believes these challenges will be significantly ameliorated by developing and widely implementing a MECI system architecture that will: •

Define a framework that supports networking among responders and coordinators in such a manner that coordination can be more effective through enhanced knowledge of the current and evolving disaster situation by all response participants relevant to their role, and through relevant information sharing and communications associated with specific coordinated response activities.

•

Serve as a structured vehicle for agencies to publish information for other agencies to view and search through,

•

Automatically route and distribute critical information to the appropriate resources,

•

Fuse data from multiple sources to create new information that will provide the responder communities with enhanced situational awareness,

•

Base all recommendations for systems on Concepts of Operations (ConOps) from standards and best practices that industry and government can embrace. The NCOIC MECI architecture defines an information acquisition, processing, and distribution system designed specifically to meet the requirements for information sharing in the context of response to CHD using HFN.

•

Be consistent with, and support, next generation all hazards emergency communications architectures and systems (i.e. the systems that are in place before disasters, and with which HFNs will deal).

•

Recognize training is the key to making HFN effectiveness in CHD and equally important is the design and pre-positioning of the HFN Fly-Away Kits (FLAKS). The system has no value to those who don’t 5

know how to use it. There are too many examples from the four CHD studied where readily available communications equipment and network elements went unused or misused because the responder communities were not trained to use those tools.

1.3.1 Standards and Best Practices The best means to rapidly provide initial responders with essential communications is by deploying hastilyformed networks (HFN), with technology based on open standards and well defined operational techniques, tactics and procedure. The term “hastily-formed networks” originated at the United States Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey California. The NPS definition of HFN, which is adopted by NCOIC, follows: An HFN has five elements: it is (1) a network of people established rapidly (2) from different communities, (3) working together in a shared conversation space (4) in which they plan, commit to, and execute actions, (5) to fulfill a large, urgent mission.

South Manhattan on 9-11, South Asia tsunami 12-2004, Katrina, 08-2005, Kashmir earthquakes 10-2005.

An HFN is thus much more than a set of organizations using advanced networking technology. To be effective in action, HFN participants must be skilled at •

Setting up mobile communication and sensor systems,

•

Conducting interagency operations, sometimes called “civil-military boundary”,

•

Collaborating on action plans and coordinating their execution,

•

Improvising, and

•

Leading a social network, where communication and decision-making are decentralized, and there is no hierarchical chain of command or other designated leader.

The description of an effective HFN Fly-Away Kit (FLaK) is contained in its original entirety on the CD from which this document was copied.

The readers of this study are urged to review the detailed analysis on technology gaps to effective MECI that are contained in sections 3, 4 and 5 of the main body of the document as well as in the appendices. Finally, the NCOIC findings for MECI strongly suggest that providing communication capability only to the professional emergency responders is not sufficient to enable efficient coordination of the emergency response for the affected population. In the case of localized and small incident emergencies there is no need for the larger population to be involved, but in the case of a disaster affecting a larger segment of the population in substantial geographical area, it is paramount that this population be maintained in the information loop. Without them being in the loop the potential occurs for compounding the disaster as we saw in Katrina, the tsunami and Kashmir. Thus, the NCOIC recommends to all MECI communities of interest, government and industry, that the normal communication and information collection and dissemination networks be considered as assets to be available during a disaster if they are available and that their roles and capabilities be incrementally developed to support this, especially if they are not so designed today. A richly connected set of networks with different technologies and overlapping services has the best chance of providing some minimal capability during a disaster due to its diversity and different sensitivities to failure. The recommendations for FlaK technology made in this report are mitigation steps, not solutions to the broader issues raised by the MECI report. All interested parties are encouraged to contact the NCOIC for comments, clarifications and collaboration on further developments in net-enabled emergency response.

Table of Contents x

Principal Authors, Special Contributors and Their Organizations

1.0 Executive Summary 1.1 Findings 1.2.1 Senate Katrina Report 1.2.2 Civil/Military Cooperation for Response to CHD 1.3 Recommendations 1.3.1 Standards and Best Practices

Preface: Introduction to the objectives and methodologies of the NCOIC.

2.0 Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability to Support Effective Disaster Response Project Overview 2.1 NCO Perspective 2.2 Understanding Disaster Response Analysis 2.3 Technical Areas 2.4 Gap Analysis - What exists now for MECI? What needs to exist to facilitate the promise of MECI going forward?

3.0 Disaster Response Requirements and Scenario Gap Analysis 3.1 Katrina

Detailed Gap Analysis

3.1.1 Defining Infrastructure Gaps and Failures 3.1.2 Communications Gap Analysis-Katrina Study-Chapter 18 3.1.3 Lack of Situational Awareness - Katrina Study – Chapter 19 of the Senate Report 3.1.3 Search and Rescue - Katrina Study – Chapter 21 of the Senate Report 3.1.4 Logistics – Katrina Study – Chapter 23 of the Senate Report

4.0 Requirements Derived from Katrina Study Gap Analysis 4.1 Disaster Response Collaborative Agent Network Conceptual Model 4.2 Operations Requirements 4.2.1 Response Coordination Planning Operations Requirements 4.2.2 Real Time Multi Agent Coordination Operations Requirements 4.2.3 Agent Context Operations Requirements 4.2.4 Agent and Network Infrastructure Operations Requirements 4.2.5 Coordination Technology Requirements 4.2.6 Coordination Planning Technology Requirements 4.3 Knowledge and Service Requirements 4.3.1 Knowledge Sharing Requirements 4.3.1.1 Domain Knowledge Requirements 4.3.1.2 Context Knowledge Requirements 4.3.1.3 Situational Knowledge Requirements 4.3.1.4 Knowledge Creation Requirements 4.3.1.5 Knowledge Sharing Requirements 4.3.1.6 Knowledge Acquisition Requirements 4.3.1.7 Knowledge Aggregation and Harmonization Requirements 4.3.1.8 Knowledge Representation 4.3.1.9 Understanding Shared Knowledge 4.3.2 Service Requirements 4.3.2.1 Service Discovery and Visibility Requirements 4.3.2.2 Service Access 4.3.2.3 Service Management 4.3.2.4 Collaborative Services 4.3.2.5 Core Services 4.3.2.6 Knowledge Services 4.3.2.7 Scenario Services 4.4 Communications Requirements 4.4.1 Interoperability Gap Requirements 4.4.2 Training Gap Requirements 4.4.3 Operational Guidance Gap Requirements 4.4.4 Infrastructure Failure Gap Requirements 4.4.5 Lack of capacity Gap Requirements 4.4.6 Access Gap Requirements 4.4.7 Summary of Communications Requirements

5.0 Disaster Response Framework and Standards Analysis 5.1 Information and Services Framework and Standards Analysis Overview 5.1.1 Current Incident Interoperability Architecture Concept 5.1.2 Current Emergency Messaging, Data and Service Standards Model 5.1.3 Current Information and Services Architecture and Standards Weaknesses 5.1.4 Semantic Interoperability Recommendations 5.1.4.1 Information and Service Framework Recommendations 5.1.4.2 Emergency Semantic Coordination Framework 5.2 Communications Recommendations 5.3 Communications Interoperability Standards Analysis 5.3.1 Project 25 5.4 Candidate Communications Standards

6.0 NCOIC MECI Findings and Recommendations 6.1 Findings 6.1.1 Issues with Civil/Military cooperation (CIMIC) for response to CHD 6.2 Issues with CIMIC in NATO 6.3 Recommendations 6.4 The Naval Postgraduate School Master’s Thesis of Captain David D. Lancaster, USMC, “Developing a Fly-Away-Kit (FLAK) to support hastily-formed networks for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.”

7.0 Appendices A: Tables of analysis data for sections 3, 4 and 5. B: References and Attributions C: Principal Authors and Their Organizations

x. Preface: Introduction to the Objectives and Methodologies of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) The mission of the NCOIC is to enable our members and customers to work together to identify and evaluate existing and emerging open standards for Network Centric Operations (NCO). We execute this mission by active collaboration with governments and industry to address the security threats of our time and response to cataclysmic events that endanger life and property. This collaboration discovers and demonstrates how NCO principles facilitate the transformation of defense capabilities, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and emergency response. The objective is to make the organizations in each of these communities successfully achieve their goals by interoperating effectively and efficiently in routine and ad hoc conditions. The goal of the NCOIC membership is to assist our governments in defining the technological framework and best practices that will yield the most capable, persistent advantage when facing a security threat. Finally, NCOIC strives to define the standards and best practices that emergency responders, around the world, can employ to achieve the situational awareness and information capabilities necessary to effectively mitigate the impact of complex humanitarian disasters. These goals and objectives are achieved through the efforts of the NCOIC members and professional staff that work in five technical focus areas: 4.

Customer Requirements Team - Provides thorough and rigorous analysis of pertinent government agency architectures, capability needs, and mandated standards to identify commonalities, synergies, conflicts, gaps and potential areas for improvement.

Architectures and Standards Analyses Team - Develops a Systems Engineering framework to organize and define the relationship between applications, data and communication elements used by suppliers and system integrators that build and deploy interoperable NCO systems.

Building Blocks Team - Identifies the widest possible inventory of standards-based NCO products.

Education and Outreach Team - Develops programs for educating the membership and the public on the tenets of NCO.

Engineering Processes Team - Plans and implements strategies to develop effective collaborative engineering environments.

Across these five core teams are specialized Integrated Project Teams (IPT). The IPT focuses on creating an actual, bounded deliverable, i.e., their work usually has a defined start and finish schedule and the IPT draws from all five major working teams. The Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability (MECI) initiative is such an IPT. This report is the first defined deliverable of the MECI IPT.

For more information on the NCOIC and its various technical and policy initiatives, its membership, and other activities visit the NCOIC at: www.ncoic.org.

Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC)

MECI Report Objectives Standards and Best Practices that: 1.

Enable communications and information sharing to support emergency response coordination activities for initial responders during the first seventy-two hours after a Complex Humanitarian Disaster (CHD) event.

Identify shortcomings in technology and policy that inhibit successful MECI for response to a CHD.

Describe a methodology by which a response to a CHD event can be analyzed from both a MECI technical and a policy perspective.

The MECI report targets four audiences •

A primary audience is the United States federal government, especially the US agencies and departments that conduct emergency response to natural disasters and terrorist acts – this includes the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Justice (DOJ), Defense (DOD) and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the United States. The report similarly targets corresponding governmental entities in other democratic countries working to improve emergency response performance.

•

The second audience is state, provincial and local responders who provide on-site response during the first 72 hours after a CDH - as such, best practices are drawn from and oriented towards those responder communities who will be active in saving lives and mitigating the disaster effects

•

The third audience is the engineering and corporate communities that supply the products and services to address the technical gaps and execute the analysis that is a key element of this report – this provides a roadmap for the design and delivery of interoperable systems at every response level

•

The fourth audience is the policy makers at all levels of government and industry that address disaster response with legislation, best practices and doctrine

This report intends to help all of these entities understand network-centric operations (NCO) in the context of disaster response. Such understanding will lead to improved emergency readiness as the several emergency responder communities acquire and train with the best technologies and operational practices. Further, the report identifies the need for an overall architectural framework that encompasses operational situational awareness, command and control, decentralized coordination, and interoperable communications to fully realize the value of MECI.

Without the recommended architectural framework, any new technology solution will provide only marginal improvement. NCOIC proposes a comprehensive strategy and follow-through implementation plan that leverages technology to create an interoperable Emergency Disaster Response Coordination Network that is extensible with international reach. The critical items required to achieve these MECI goals are: 1. Improved operations planning, organizational pre-agreements, and information sharing relevant to the operations coordination and management functions. 2. An overarching architectural framework that enables information sharing with common communication and data services that facilitate centralized coordination of distributed, decentralized emergency response operations – a virtualized hierarchical organizational. 3. The use and extension of open standards to technologically enable Emergency Disaster Response; this means extending information and services that are specifically designed for emergency operations such as: •

EDXL- the Emergency Data eXchange Language message standard that originated in the Department of Homeland Security’s Disaster Management E-Gov Initiative,

•

CAP – the Common Alerting Protocol open standard data interchange format that can collect hazard warnings and reports - locally, regionally and nationally,

•

DMIS – Disaster Management Interoperability Services are interoperable web services that provide responders with communication tools that allow them to share information with other responder organizations.

These and like technologies must be cultivated and exploited end-to-end; they capitalize on the day-to-day information infrastructure with adaptive capabilities for the emergency environment. 4. An information-based network that enables each participant to share, view and access situational information relevant to their role and the state of the disaster situation. 5. A web service environment that will provide multiple coordination services and enable dynamic, effective response. 6. A rapidly, semi-autonomously configurable communications infrastructure based on Hastily Formed Nodes (HFN) that assimilates surviving infrastructure components to provide communications capability between coordination centers and responders.

2.0

Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability to Support Effective Disaster Response Project Overview

Placing the NCOIC Work in Context The number of natural and man-made disasters and the number of people affected by such events is increasing annually. Over the past fifteen years on average 62,000 people per year have died in natural disasters. During this same period, more than two billion people have been directly affected by natural disasters. Add to these numbers those affected by manmade disasters of all types and the number of people affected exceeds three billion, more than half of the world’s total population. Sadly, during the period from December 2004 through October 2005 an estimated 375,000 died in disasters ranging from tsunamis to earthquakes to hurricanes and typhoons occurring all over the globe. There are many factors contributing to the apparent growing severity of these events but none is more significant than the fact that population density along coastlines and in seismically active areas is steadily increasing While most governments, national to local, recognize the importance of disasters as combined social, economic, security, medical and public health problems, resources devoted in advance for response to the inevitable events range from modest to totally inadequate almost everywhere worldwide.

2.1 NCO Perspective 6

This study offers a NCO solution to one aspect of this inadequacy. The NCOIC project team focused on one element required in all responses to CHD, irrespective of their origins, i.e., the need of initial responders to immediately establish a CHD voice-grade and basic data communications among themselves and with their higher echelons, even when power and communications infrastructure do not exist at the site of the CHD event.

NCO are information superiority-enabled concepts of operations (CONOPS) that generate increased situational awareness by networking sensors, decision makers, and other participants to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of decision making, a higher tempo of operations, and a greater degree of self-synchronization. NCO are the application of the fundamental tenets of Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) to aspects of national security for the missions of both the DOD and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). NCW is the embodiment of an "Information Age" transformation of the US and Australian DODs and all the elements that support them. NCW represents a set of war fighting concepts and associated military capabilities that allow warfighters to take full advantage of all available information and bring all available assets to bear in a rapid and flexible manner. A closely related concept, Network Enabled Capability (NEC) is embraced by most European MODs. NCW is based on the following tenets: A robustly networked force improves information sharing; Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness; Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command; these, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness. (See Network Centric Warfare, Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, D.S. Alberts, J.J. Garstka, F.P. Stein, CCRP, 1999)

This document also describes our analysis of disaster response operational requirements. This analysis lays the groundwork for identification and evaluation of standards for responder networking to support collaboration and coordination through networked communications, information sharing, and web services. The report emphasizes standards and architectural elements that support the NCO goals of improving operational effectiveness through superior information networking, thus enabling more effective coordination of activities by responders. Achieving the dramatic improvements in communications interoperability among the responder communities is best accomplished technically, the NCOIC believes, by creating a “Services Information Framework” which fuses data from multiple sources to create compelling directions for responder communities with enhanced situational awareness and acuity for rapid decision and action measures. The Services Information Framework will be based upon recommendations for COTS standards that can be embraced both by commercial industry and government. Figure 2.0 underscores in a high level framework how broad situational awareness is compiled from several responders who have arrived at a CHD event. In this case, fire, emergency medical teams and non-governmental organizations, e.g., Red Cross, etc. Additionally, the NCOIC believes the key to understanding and to achieving these objectives is to understand that it is not just about technology but about the significant factor of the human dimension of interaction among organizations. The intent is to shift the characterization of the challenge to that of information movement, management and coordination to bring about orchestrated response to major human situation requiring decisive action.

Figure 2.0 MECI: Proposed Services Information Framework

2.2 Understanding Disaster Response Analysis CHD are multi-causal, requiring complex response mechanisms depending on the nature of the disaster. CHD are manifested in several ways: •

Natural disasters: tsunami, earthquake, flood, pandemic, volcanic eruption, hurricanes/typhoons, drought, famine, etc

•

Man-made disasters: war, genocide, terrorism, pollution, any use of weapons of mass destruction (CBR), etc

•

Combinations of natural and man-made disasters: flooding in deforested areas, mass loss of life and damage from overbuilding human settlements on earthquake faults, near coastlines, etc

Describing the standards and best practices for establishing HFN to support first and initial second responders to a CHD is the goal of the NCOIC MECI initiative. To achieve this goal, the NCOIC MECI team has conducted extensive primary research on the best technologies and practices to effectively deploy HFN immediately after a CHD event. We have also reviewed hundreds of initiatives undertaken by governments, corporations, academic institutions and non-profit organizations that analyzed communications challenges associated with CHD. Finally, we focused on four highly significant CHD events of the past five years from the perspective of communications successes and failures: (1) the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City, (2) the South Asia tsunami, (3) the Katrina/Rita hurricane devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, and (4) the earthquakes in Kashmir. The four events we chose to evaluate resulted in the deaths of nearly 350,000 people, more than 500,000 injuries with almost as many people displaced from their homes and livelihoods for extended periods of time. The economic impact of these events from all sources is estimated at nearly $2 trillion and climbing. The NCOIC therefore believes that any steps that can be taken in advance to minimize the loss of life, injury and economic devastation will be of value worldwide. To this end the findings and recommendations detailed in this paper are offered without limitation to any and all that will benefit from this initiative. Because of the similarities in effective MECI across all the four events analyzed the NCOIC MECI team chose to focus the report on the Katrina event as this CHD is better documented than all the others. Our findings and recommendations are applicable across all the events studied.

2.3 Technical Areas It is the premise of this initiative that achieving the capabilities defined by three architectural elements will enable the desired improvement in communications for enhanced situational awareness and an improved common operational picture (COP) for initial responders. The three architectural elements analyzed are: 1.

Communications Interoperability

Information Services

Web Services

2.4 Gap Analysis - What exists now for MECI? What needs to exist to facilitate the promise of MECI going forward? The scope of the problem that is envisioned is at a humanitarian disaster level where significant coordination must occur at all levels of private, public, and government organizations, and where multiple types of resources and disaster management services and operations are required for assisting a significant population affected by the disaster. The approaches considered in this report are not focused on the needs applicable to individual emergencies that are handled by normal emergency response capabilities of fire, police, and EMS, hospitals, transportation and related services, but rather on larger scale emergency situations requiring extensive coordination of response among multiple organizations and responders, and where significant numbers of the population are affected. Each of the following areas is important for enabling effective emergency disaster response coordination. Section 3 identifies the technical requirements derived from analysis of various disaster scenarios and Katrina reports, while Section 4 identifies and evaluates the standards framework in support of these requirements. 1.

Emergency Response Operations Requirements Analysis – Analysis of technical requirements derived from evaluations of Goals, Roles, and Collaboration Activities for Specific Disasters analyzed by this study for all types of Responder Participants at all levels of organization.

Shared Information - Identification, definition, and specification of relevant information sharing.

Collaboration Enabling Services – Identification, definition, and specification of networked collaborative services that support information exchange, discovery, and activity coordination for emergency disaster response operations.

Communication Services - Identification, definition and specification of the network communication services required to support effective information sharing and joint decision making among multiple agents.

Network – Identification, definition and specification of networking technology standards and structures that enable rapid deployment in a disaster response area.

Figure 2. Emergency Disaster Response Operations Technology Supporting Requirements

Though the Concept of Operations (ConOps) is not the focus of this report, examples are provided to identify and illustrate the need for requirements that shared information and collaboration enabling services should satisfy. The ConOps are not exhaustive and are provided only for determining adequacy of existing standards based solutions and for providing guidance for other requirements in the topic area. Further, this report identifies a set of requirements that could be used to select an appropriate set of communication services that would satisfy the ConOps examples and the performance characteristics of the Shared Information and Collaboration Enabling Services (SICES). The SICES are identified in the body of the report in a series of requirement matrices and summary statements and graphics. In addition, this report describes the standards and best practices to achieve MECI with existing commercial-offthe-shelf (COTS) technology. We also describe the direction toward which standards and best practices must go to achieve the true goal of MECI, i.e., self-synchronizing COTS systems to support initial responders to CHD events.

3.0 Disaster Response Requirements and Scenario Gap Analysis The intent of this section is to identify gaps associated with specific Network Centric Operations architectural concerns, as illustrated in Figure 3. The analysis process does not have the objective of identifying or implying any solutions, but rather the goal of identifying and organizing the barriers to collaborative and effective disaster response in such a manner that recommendations could be subsequently defined, and that solutions satisfying subsets of these recommendations could be mapped to the specific barriers that they mitigate: 1.

Operations

Collaboration and Information

Communications

Network

Though other information is available and can be analyzed, the U.S. Senate report on Katrina was sufficiently comprehensive and organized to enable this type of analysis, and we also concluded that the nature of this disaster itself and its response had a sufficient set of problems that it would provide valuable clues to the potential gaps that might occur in other disaster situations.

Katrin a Report

Report Workflow Process

The diagram on page 30 illustrates the basic workflow process used by the MECI team to create objective results. The key approach was to identify problems or gaps for a real emergency disaster response historical event and to use authoritative information sources, “Senate Katrina Report” for gap analysis. Categorization of the gaps and summarization of the incidents associated with each gap not only identified the highest reported gap frequency, but also enabled easier identification of requirements that would mitigate or resolve the reasons for failure at the next stage of the workflow. Sets of requirements were created for Communications, Situation Awareness and Operational categories, while recommendations identified specific standards and architectures and extensions that would satisfy these requirements.

3.1 Katrina Detailed Gap Analysis The Katrina analysis is oriented towards identifying gaps in the response that were barriers to achieving shared information, communications, computer based services, and network infrastructure requirements to support response decisions and collaboration. The analysis results provide a guide to specific major gaps that apply across multiple response scenarios and disaster event types. The analyses were accomplished with the objective of gaining a better understanding of the gaps, or causes for unavailability that hindered effective response, and most especially the dependency relationships of these gaps between Coordination, Communication Services, Network Types, User Roles and Types, Information Sharing, and Infrastructure. Figure 3.0 Katrina Analysis Areas

3.1.1 Defining Infrastructure Gaps and Failures An infrastructure gap is an uncontrollable factor by a responder community in an initial response environment such as occurred in all the CHD events analyzed for this report. The next most frequently encountered gap is operational guidance. Operational guidance deals specifically with coordination and reporting thresholds that, if exceeded, would trigger an action. Inadequate management of communications assets and resource environments significantly increased congestion in the communications fabric. The lack of an overall governance entity during the event led to the physical and logical degradation of the communications fabric. This degradation of communications capability then led to a lack of voice and data connectivity to support services. Capacity became a factor because of infrastructure destruction. Inability of supporting elements at all levels to communicate with first responders led to misunderstanding of the requirement Interoperability was a gap that did not allow the use of legacy equipment and different communications mediums available during the event. Training is probably better addressed in the Operational Guidance after the essential tasks list has been formed. Access, listed as a low order event, in fact, was a major inhibiter in the area of operation. Access to the area and control of resources became a factor that affected overall operations more than was indicated. An examination of the infrastructure gaps will highlight focus areas for developing solution requirements. It will further illustrate where redundancies may be required to prevent single points of failure for the entire HFN. Each analysis will be comprised of a table that maps each problem incident identified in the chapter of the Senate Katrina report.

3.1.2 Communications Gap Analysis-Katrina Study-Chapter 18 The analysis of communications challenges in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 18 of the Senate report are summarized in the following chart:

Figure 3.1.2 Chapter 18 Communications

3.1.2 Lack of Situational Awareness - Katrina Study â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Chapter 19 of the Senate Report The analysis of the challenges to develop shared situational awareness and a common operating picture (COP) by responders to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 19 of the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

Figure 3.1.3 Chapter 19 Lack of situational awareness

After carefully analyzing this chapter, it appears that out of 17 different incidents extracted from reports and interviews, 15 incidents show lack of common operating picture among and within different government branches and organizations. The second dominant gap is failure to analyze multiple reports due to lack of information gathering strategy and identification of reliable information resources. Furthermore, failure to analyze multiple reports leads to the third dominant gap, which is failure of sharing and forwarding reports and failure to create reports. These three gaps left the higher levels of management in a black hole of information which greatly influenced command and control effectiveness in all levels from top to bottom in the chain of command. In addition failure to understand reports and failure to acquire reports are significant gaps that minimized situational awareness during the response efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina. From a Network Centric Operations perspective these gaps map to many known Net Centric Data tenets and concepts, where at a minimum, information must be made visible to the network community, it must be accessible, it must be understandable, it must be relevant to the role and mission of the human agents, and it must be manageable.

3.1.4 Search and Rescue - Katrina Study – Chapter 21 of the Senate Report The analysis of search and rescue challenges in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 21 of the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

Figure 3.1.3 Chapter 21 - Search and Rescue

Drawing on the analysis in Figure 3.1.3 it is clear that the most significant gap was lack of operational planning and coordination. The other deficiencies were distributed somewhat evenly across the remaining gap categories of situational awareness, communication services, logistics, and network infrastructure. From the search and rescue scenario analysis we can conclude that thorough emphasis must be placed on mitigating the gaps associated with operations coordination and planning, the remaining gap categories are all equally important with respect to requirements for solutions that would mitigate their effects or prevent the gap from occurring.

Navigation to Requirements for Search and Rescue Gaps Operational Requirements (Para 4.2)

Knowledge Sharing Requirements (Para 4.3.1)

Network Infrastructure

Para 4.2.4 Agent Network Infrastructure

Communication Services

Service Requirements (Para 4.3.2)

Communication Requirements (Para 4.4)

Para 4.3.1.1, 4.3.1.2, 4.3.1.3 Domain, Context and Situational Knowledge

Para 4.3.2.3 Service Management

Para 4.4.4 Infrastructure Failure

Para 4.2.1 Response Coordination Operations, Para 4.4.3 Operational Gap Guidance

Para. 4.3.1.5 Knowledge Sharing

Para 4.3.2.5 Core Services

Para 4.4 Communication

Logistics

Para 4.2.2 Real time Multi Agent Coordination

Para 4.3.1.1, 4.3.1.2, 4.3.1.5, 4.3.1.7 Domain, Context, Sharing, Aggregation Knowledge

Para 4.3.2.4 Collaborative Services, Para 4.3.2.7 Scenario Services

Para 4.4.6 Access

Situational Awareness

Para 4.2.4 Agent Context

Para 4.3.1.3 Situational Knowledge

Para 4.3.2.6 Knowledge Sharing Services

Para 4.4.4 Infrastructure Failure, Para 4.4.3 Operational guidance

Coordination Planning

Para 4.2.4, 4.2.6 Coordination Technology and Planning

Para 4.3.1.5, 4.3.1.2, 4.3.1.9 Knowledge Context, Sharing and Understanding

Para 4.3.2.4 Collaborative Services, Para 4.3.2.1 Service Discovery and Visibility

Para 4.4.2 Training

Gap

3.1.4 Logistics – Katrina Study – Chapter 23 of the Senate Report The analysis of logistics challenges in response to the Katrina CHD as detailed in Chapter 23 of the Senate report is summarized in the following chart:

Figure 3.1.4 Chapter 23 - Logistics

As it appears in figure 3.1.4 (which is extracted from table AA 23.1), operation management is the number one gap observed from this chapter in most governmental levels. Lack of operational management in most cases leads to lack of coordination and planning which is visible across all other chapters analyzed in this document. The third pragmatic factor identified in this chapter is lack of situational awareness, which is closely tied with coordination and management. Communication also is a visible gap in logistics. In most cases, lack of communication (especially data communication) due to overwhelmed networks and damaged infrastructures prevented local response managers from articulating an accurate level of demand for commodities. Surprisingly lack of resources is one of less repeated gaps in logistics challenges .Most of reported lack of resources gaps are actually due to lack of planning and mismanagement by a Federal agency.

Logistics Gaps Mapped to Requirements Gap

Operational Requirements (Para 4.2)

Knowledge Sharing Requirements (Para 4.3.1)

Service Requirements (Para 4.3.2)

Communication Requirements (Para 4.4)

Operation Management

Para 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3 Response Coordination, Real Time Multi Agent Coordination, Agent Context

Para 4.3.1.1, 4.3.1.2, 4.3.1.3 Domain, Context and Situational Knowledge

Para 4.3.2.3 Service Management

Para 4.4.3 Operational Guidance

Communication

Para 4.2.1 Response Coordination, Para 4.4.3 Operational Gap Guidance

Para. 4.3.1.5 Knowledge Sharing

Para 4.3.2.5 Core Services

Para 4.4 Communication

Logistics (Resources)

Para 4.2.2 Real time Multi Agent Coordination,

Para 4.3.1.1, 4.3.1.2, 4.3.1.5, 4.3.1.7 Domain, Context, Sharing, Aggregation Knowledge

Para 4.3.2.4 Collaborative Services, Para 4.3.2.7 Scenario Services

Para 4.4.6 Access

Situational Awareness

Para 4.2.4 Agent Context

Para 4.3.1.3 Situational Knowledge

Para 4.3.2.6 Knowledge Sharing Services

Para 4.4.4 Infrastructure Failure, Para 4.4.3 Operational guidance

Coordination and Planning

Para 4.2.5, 4.2.6 Coordination Technology and Planning

Para 4.3.1.5, 4.3.1.2, 4.3.1.9 Knowledge Context, Sharing and Understanding

Para 4.3.2.4 Collaborative Services, Para 4.3.2.1 Service Discovery and Visibility

Para 4.4.2 Training

4.0 Requirements Derived from Katrina Study Gap Analysis 4.1 Disaster Response Collaborative Agent Network Conceptual Model The following identifies sets of architectural requirements that would resolve the identified Katrina mobile communications gaps. Since the gap analysis covered four major categories, operations, information and services, communications services, and network infrastructure, it is informative to illustrate the relationships between these areas within a conceptual model. The model has the following elements: 1.

Agent – Human/organizational participant in disaster response who: A.

has a collaborative role and capabilities for action,

creates, processes, and shares knowledge with other agents,

communicates with other agents for collaborative purposes,

affects the real world with actions,

senses the situation and updates its local domain knowledge,

adapts the set of collaborative actions and communications based on an analysis of the current situational context,

G. interacts with a technology infrastructure to access and utilize communication, information and collaborative services. 2.

Agent’s Domain Knowledge – The knowledge that an agent understands, processes and shares with others. Though each agent has specialized domain knowledge associated with its role, training, and capabilities, it will also have common domain knowledge that enables collaboration and understanding of the overall situation.

Agent’s Context – The perspective of geo-spatial context, time, and collaborative situation, which is informed by the agent’s social and organizational framework.

Agent Actions – The actions that an agent can execute.

Cognitive Processing – The ability of an agent to make decisions about what actions to take within a situational context and collaborative state

Situational Environment – Knowledge about the physical world as well as the organizational and social context in which each agent acts.

Semantic Interaction/Interoperability – A.

Intentional Communications – each agent communicates with other agents to share knowledge about their intentions, situational context, and their specialized and common domain knowledge

Collaboration – each agent participates in collaborative disaster response activities which are supported by intentional communications, e.g., search and rescue, logistics, medical response, etc.

Shared Knowledge – each agent has requirements for knowledge about the current situation, status of other agents, collaborative response activities, and other information that is required by the larger response community

Network Infrastructure – The technology layer that provides a wide set of communications, information sharing, and collaborative services to the disaster response agent community. The focus of technology based requirements will be on those infrastructure technology networks to support each of these service domains.

Figure 4.0 Interoperability Model

4.2 Operations Requirements These requirements are derived from the previous gap analysis summary tables and focus on those aspects that a human agent must possess to improve response through effective collaborative networking operations. These are not technical or system or even network requirements but rather are requirements associated with human operations activities in a network collaboration with other agents. The primary elements enabling effective collaboration are: 1.

Coordination – The ability to coordinate activities based on operational response plans.

Dynamic Commitment - The ability to form collaboration commitments with other agents.

Share Knowledge - The ability to share, understand and utilize domain and external knowledge relevant to the collaboration activity.

Agent Context - The ability to share their specific situational context to guide and monitor coordination status.

Situational Knowledge - The ability to sense, integrate, and process disaster situational knowledge.

Utilize Resources - The ability to effectively utilize a wide variety of resources, including infrastructure.

Core services – the ability to access rights management, agency locator, information discovery, and similar core shared services, and dynamically give them new information and policies.

These agent operational needs are organized as a set of requirements in the categories illustrated in Figure 4. Of these categories, the gap analysis indicates a significant need for enabling better real-time coordination in an evolving disaster situation and response. It is of critical importance that plans specialized to a variety of disaster situations be known to all agents, and that the various roles for collaborative response be thoroughly trained. The following gaps, the gap analysis summary tables, were used to create the operations requirements. •

Chapter 18 – Communication

•

Operational Guidance,

•

Training,

•

Chapter 19 – Lack of Situational Awareness

•

Failure to Understand

•

Chapter 21 – Search and Rescue

•

Coordination Planning

•

Logistics

•

Chapter 23 – Logistics

•

Operation Management

•

Resources

•

Coordination & Planning

Figure 4.1 Operations Requirements Categories

4.2.1 Response Coordination Planning Operations Requirements 1.

Each agent should have access to information about disaster response plans that could guide their collaboration activities

Each disaster response plan should focus on a particular category of disaster and breakdown the activities for different response activity scenarios, e.g., search and rescue, medical, etc.

Each responder organization should be able to understand their role in what activities they are involved as described in a specific plan

Each individual agent should be able to understand their role within the larger organizational plan

The disaster response plan should be continuously updated as the local capabilities evolve with new equipment and training

The disaster response plan should indicate dependencies between organizations within specific scenarios.

4.2.2 Real Time Multi Agent Coordination Operations Requirements 1.

Knowledge about all agent and organization capabilities, roles and current situational state should be made available to the whole responder community by each agent and organization

Each agent should be able to easily update and access information about the status of any collaborative network activities in which they are engaged

Agents who have the role of managing coordination should be able to easily acquire knowledge of the current status of multiple agent response collaborations

Agents who have the role of managing coordination should be able to easily communicate with communities of agents involved in specific response collaborations about any changes in plans

All agents involved in response should be able to be alerted about any changes in response coordination plans

Agents who have the role of managing coordination should be able to observe the evolving real time situation and the status according to plan

4.2.3 Agent Context Operations Requirements 1.

Each agent should be able to communicate their commitment and status for specific response activities with other responder agents and coordinators

Each agent should be able to update others about their situational context, e.g., location, capabilities, coordination dependencies, available resources, etc.

An agent’s situational context should guide overall coordination and ensure that only the most relevant information is shared based on their collaboration activity needs

4.2.4 Agent and Network Infrastructure Operations Requirements 1.

Each agent should participate in sufficient training to be able to utilize the information, communication and coordination services offered by the emergency disaster response infrastructure technology

Each agent should be equipped with user devices that enable their access to and utilization of network infrastructure information, communication, and collaboration services appropriate to their role

The network infrastructure services should support a ubiquitous and transparent coordination service environment across all responder agents.

4.2.5 Coordination Technology Requirements Coordination should provide universal shared information analysis through creation of real time common operating picture (COP) of all coordination activities evolving in the disaster affected area. Different responder organizations and government entities should be able to obtain information that they need regarding all activities that they are engaged in or the activities that influence their activities. A knowledge based framework should be created on top of the current XML messaging standards to provide knowledge about an evolving emergency network coordination situation space, which is comprised of discrete and possibly interdependent coordination patterns and activities based on semantic evaluations of standard XML formatted emergency messages. In addition, the knowledge based framework for coordination should enable response managers to monitor: 4.

Committed resources

Responders’ locations with respect to incident area

Coordination activity completion status

Anomaly analysis, such as overcommitted resources

Changes in response plan

4.2.6 Coordination Planning Technology Requirements Any response organization and local, state, and federal government should have multiple detailed plans compatible with National Response Plan (NRP), DHS, COMCARE, OASIS, EIC initiatives to respond to all types of disaster scenarios. Planning should create a collaborative environment between responder organizations and different layers of government in order to optimize and speed up the response effort process. Planning should predefine all responder roles and capabilities during the time of disaster, depending on the scale and type of the disaster. Planning should also include information about pre-positioned resources. In order to achieve all of the above in manageable style, a planning tool suite should be developed to work in conjunction with a knowledge based framework for coordination. Such architecture should enable emergency response managers to create scenario-based plans for specific types of disasters based on semantic coordination patterns. Figure 4.2.6.1 below illustrates a high level scenario-based plan for Search and Rescue.

Figure 4.2.6.1 Search and Rescue Use Case Model

4.3 Knowledge and Service Requirements This section lists a set of requirements that would mitigate the situational awareness gaps. The ability to share knowledge about the current situation, status of completion of activities, available resources, agent commitments to collaboration, and an approach that will enable each collaborating agent to have access to the information relevant to their role is critical to enabling coordinated disaster response. Computer based services in an open network environment is a technique for supporting technology mediated interactions between agents for multiple purposes. A good example of a technology framework that supports open networks of services is web services which provide user level interactions to accomplish something on behalf of the user.

4.3.1 Knowledge Sharing Requirements The following table correlates the gaps with the knowledge requirements categories on a one-to-one basis for most gaps, while one gap requires three different requirements categories. The gap Conflicting Reports can be mitigated by structuring knowledge into responder domain knowledge models, agent context knowledge, and disaster situational knowledge. The knowledge sharing requirements categories can be also be viewed from the perspective of enabling agent knowledge, agent knowledge operations, and knowledge sharing interoperability: 1.

Agent Knowledge Requirements – the set of knowledge domains that the disaster responder community utilizes.

Knowledge Operations Requirements – the set of operations that the responder community takes with respect to knowledge.

Interoperability Requirements – the requirements that enable consistent semantic representation and interpretation of shared knowledge, which are related to the situational awareness gaps as illustrated in Figure 3 as described below:

Gap Pareto Order of Significance

1. COP

Knowledge Sharing Requirements Category

Agent Knowledge, Knowledge Operations, Semantic Interoperability

COP

Agent, Operations, Interoperability

Aggregation and Harmonization

Operations

3. Sharing & Forwarding Report

Knowledge Sharing

Operations

4. Report Creation

Knowledge Creation

Operations

5. Acquire Report

Knowledge Access/Acquisition

Operations

6.Understand Report

Understanding Shared Knowledge

Interoperability

7. Conflicting Reports

Domain Knowledge Models

Agent

Situational Knowledge

Agent

Agent Context Knowledge

Agent

2. Analyze Multiple Reports

Table 4.3.1. Situational Awareness Gaps and Knowledge Sharing Requirements

Figure 4.3.1.1. Knowledge Sharing Requirements Categories

4.3.1.1 Domain Knowledge Requirements 1.

Relevant Knowledge Sharing - The operating environment should support relevant knowledge sharing for each responder and collaborative community.

Knowledge Management - The operating environment should support knowledge management.

Discoverable and Accessible - Shared knowledge should be discoverable and accessible to the whole responder community.

Explicit Semantic Representation - Domain should have explicit semantic representation defined by responder communities.

Semantic Transformation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; If agencies are using applications that do not have interfaces to standards, the operating environment should support semantic transformations between different representations, schemas and ontologies to enable mutually consistent understanding.

4.3.1.2 Context Knowledge Requirements 1.

Agent context knowledge should comprise the following information elements: location, collaboration roles, current communication capabilities, available equipment, current responder status, organizational relationships, organizational constraints, environmental constraints, and other available resources.

Organizational context knowledge should support formation and management of temporary virtual organizations along with information about membership, organizational role, capabilities, and current tasks/missions.

Political context should provide information about political entities and agents who are participants in the response and their roles, capabilities and limitations, and economic limitations and impacts.

4.3.1.3 Situational Knowledge Requirements 1.

The operating environment should support the capture and sharing of all information that is relevant to the nature of the disaster (type of disaster, geographical area, geological data, meteorological, relationship to affected population impact.

The operating environment should support the capture and sharing of all information that is relevant to coordinated disaster response (status of specific collaboration activities, agents involved in response activities, resource dependencies, resource management).

4.3.1.4 Knowledge Creation Requirements 1.

Each agent should be able to create facts in a form that can be semantically interpreted by other agents and machines and that is consistent with the domain, situational or context semantic models.

Agents should be able to annotate sharable knowledge with situational and agent context information.

Some annotation information should be automatically created when agents are creating sharable knowledge, e.g., situational and agent context, to reduce the agent burden.

Sensor data should be captured and integrated with domain, situational and context models at time of creation.

Shareable knowledge facts or instances should be created in a form that makes clear the relationships between the shared information data elements in time, space, and situational state. All created knowledge instances should have sufficient metadata to identify the creating entity, the location, the creation time, the capture time and location for each constituent data elements if different than the fact creation time and location, the means of data capture.

4.3.1.5 Knowledge Sharing Requirements 1.

All knowledge created by different means and sources should be captured, annotated, related to domain models, and integrated with the overall emergency disaster response sharable information space.

All created knowledge instances should have sufficient metadata to enable discovery.

Agents should be able to publish sharable data to the general responder community at the time of creation.

Agents should be able to share knowledge with confidence that other agents involved in collaboration activities will be alerted to knowledge update events.

Any knowledge contributed to the shared space should be available to any agent, consistent with any security or other constraints.

Knowledge that is shared should have sufficient metadata to support determination of trust.

4.3.1.6 Knowledge Acquisition Requirements 1.

Each agent should have access to all shared knowledge, consistent with security or other constraints.

Acquiring knowledge should not result in inconsistent interpretations of the original semantic definitions and representation of knowledge.

Queries made to the shared knowledge space should have near real time response in emergency response situations appropriate to the type of collaborative activity.

Alerts will be “pushed” to the responder.

4.3.1.7 Knowledge Aggregation and Harmonization Requirements 1.

Aggregation of facts within the same knowledge domain models should maintain semantic consistency with the domain models.

Aggregation of facts from multiple different knowledge domain models should be consistent with an aggregation semantic model that provides consistent interpretation of the original facts within itself.

Aggregated and harmonized information from a specific perspective should have sufficient metadata to enable tracing of the dependent semantic model relationships.

Different views can be displayed as required by the user.

4.3.1.8 Knowledge Representation 1.

All shared knowledge should be specified with a semantic meta model with an explicit component based on a W3C standard language and an implicit semantic definition in document form.

All shared ontologies, expressed in W3C RDF or W3C OWL standards or equivalent, should have their concepts and vocabulary consistent with community of interest data models or schemas, e.g., EDXL expressed as an XML schema.

All sensor data should have sufficient metadata to enable integration with higher level semantically expressed knowledge models.

Each responder community of interest (COI) should have a domain semantic knowledge model which defines shared information from their perspective.

Multiple communities of interest should utilize commonly defined data elements in XML schemas which may be reinterpreted semantically according to their own semantic domain models.

Shared information should always be expressed in XML format.

All shared knowledge should be expressed in layers of semantic standards according to the set of W3C standards, XML, RDF, and OWL.

All emergency data should use semantic and messaging standards developed by the broad emergency response community, and all applications should have interfaces to them. The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is an important step towards semantic consistency, although it is “Justice-centric”. The OASIS EDXL message standards and the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol are important steps toward message standards.

4.3.1.9 Understanding Shared Knowledge 1.

All shared knowledge, information and data should be specified and shared in a manner that will enable mutually consistent semantic interpretation by all responder communities. Where emergency messaging standards have been developed they should be used and applications should have interfaces to them.

Each COI may reinterpret shared XML specified data elements according to the concepts contained in their domain semantic model, ontology or equivalent.

Ontologies should have metadata associated with them to enable determination of compatibility of semantic interpretation by all technology based services and applications.

All shared data should have explicit context metadata that enables identification of the semantic representation domain model that can be used to interpret it.

The “key word” concept used in the OASIS EDXL Distributional Element and Common Alerting Protocol standards allows parties to identify the dictionary they are using and the definition of the term in it.

4.3.2 Service Requirements This section identifies a set of requirements that can be used subsequently to identify technical standards supporting web-type computer services for responder coordination and knowledge sharing. The implications of the gaps identified the Logistics Gap Analysis are used to identify computer based service requirements as follows. Service requirements should be in support of the operations requirements as identified in Appendix A. 1.

Agent Coordination Operations Planning

Agent Context Operations

Multi Agent Coordination Operations

Infrastructure Operations

4.3.2.1 Service Discovery and Visibility Requirements 1.

Services should be described using common service description language standard

Service descriptions should contain sufficient metadata information to enable discovery of instantiated services on an open network

Services should be defined in the description in sufficient detail to enable matching of service capabilities with agent semantic queries

Service descriptions should include references to relevant domain data models

Instantiated Service Status and QOS capabilities should be described, made accessible, and understandable to support agent discovery.

4.3.2.2 Service Access 6.

The service description should contain metadata identifying the standards and protocols that are required for accessing any instantiated service conforming to the description

All agent interactions with a network service should conform to the service description

Methods should be provided to constrain and restrict agent access to services for security and other reasons

Each access request/response should be confirmed and any reasons for denial communicated to the agent

10. All services should have access rights defined for various community types: all, specific COI, specific organization, specific responder, etc. 11. A single access interaction authorization should be persistent and allow access to other authorized services without requiring additional authorization processes.

4.3.2.3 Service Management 1.

Information about the status of each instantiated service should be available for management operations

All service management operations should be controlled through authorization methods

Service QOS constraints or policies should be part of the service description, made available to management operations, and be used to control service performance

Service anomalies should be reported and statistics gathered for management operations

Service Management should be able to establish community subscription and access to services

4.3.2.4 Collaborative Services 6.

Collaborative Services should be provided to enable and support dynamic collaboration activities among responders

Collaborative services should support responder participation management

Collaborative services should support sharing of information about collaborative activity requests, commitments, completions, resources needed, and agent context

Collaborative services should support creation of an overall coordination situation picture

10. Collaborative services should at least include the core services of:

a. Identity rights management b. Access control, and b. Agency locator service 11. These capabilities need to be developed, deployed and have agencies registered long before any disaster events.

4.3.2.5 Core Services 7

Core services are a new concept in emergency communications. They are services necessary for interoperability in the broad, diverse, safety virtual enterprise. They occur when the business case is compelling to provide a single service for all or most emergency domains. For example, although it is happening today all over the country, it makes little sense for every agency to develop its own comprehensive “data telephone book” of other agencies and businesses. It makes no sense to try to execute tens of thousands of bilateral Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) between emergency organizations for data sharing. It makes no sense (although it is being done everywhere) for every emergency IT application to have its own rights management system. When a disaster strikes and much of the infrastructure is destroyed, rapid interoperability from new HFN systems linked to the remaining infrastructure will be enabled by core services accessible from remote locations. To enable ubiquitous messaging, one needs to know exactly who the organizations are, what incidents they want to know about, for what geographic areas, and where they want the data sent. And there needs to be an electronic system to apply the rules for who can send and receive each kind of incident related message, and the geographic area of that permission. Today, every application with a data communications function attempts both functions for itself, so there are many stovepipes.

They are discussed in detail in pages 44-54 of the FCC’s NRIC VII Focus Group 1D emergency communications report, December, 2005. See www.nric.org. There they are described as “facilitation services”. Coming from the law enforcement and Justice side, the Global Infrastructure/Standards Working Group’s Messaging Focus Group Final Report of April 2006 supports the same ideas, but calls them “core capabilities.” See http://www.it.ojp.gov/topic.jsp?topic_id=8

Creating and offering these initial core services by and for the use of all emergency organizations and their intermediary communications systems is a far more efficient solution. The key ones are tools for authorization/authentication (identity rights management, access control) and agency location/registration. Core services should be owned and offered by non-profit consortia of emergency and safety organizations that contract with leading IT companies to provide the technical service.

Rights for bridging radio systems could be added to a rights management core service (i.e. beyond data transmission rights, add who is empowered to use the “drag and drop” software to link communications through various radio systems), and listings of talk groups and frequencies for agencies could be added as a component of the agency location registry. This would allow Internet Protocol bridges between radio systems to be implemented much more rapidly and cost effectively.

4.3.2.6 Knowledge Services 1.

Supports the ability for agents to discover, access and share information for different collaborative communities and activities

Supports Knowledge Management

Supports the creation and addition of new information within knowledge bases

Supports modification/creation of semantic metadata models, ontologies, schemas, and taxonomies

Supports management of relationships between metadata descriptions and knowledge base instances

Supports various matching algorithms and techniques for query matching with knowledge metadata

Supports near real time event notifications to agents on occurrence of subscribed knowledge updates

Supports near real-time integration of knowledge and information from multiple sources with different perspective views for situational awareness: “Coordination Activity Status”, “Resource Availability”, and “Agent Context”.

4.3.2.7 Scenario Services 1.

Enhanced coordination of response can be achieved by provision of suites of scenario specific coordination services such as “Search and Rescue”, “Logistics”, “Medical Response”, “Law Enforcement”, etc.

Scenario services should be associated with communities of agents assigned to each scenario.

Shared Knowledge should be explicitly associated with response scenarios to reduce information glut and the “fog of war”.

See www.nears.us where a large group of such organizations is recommending exactly this approach for EPAD, an agency locator and companion rights management service. 8

4.4 Communications Requirements As indicated in Hurricane Katrina and other recent disasters, loss of communications is very critical and has severe impacts on the efficiency of first and second responders. In the first 72 hours, there is a need to very quickly restore some communications in certain locations and provide links to networks outside of the disaster area. From our analysis of chapter 18 from the U.S. Senate report on Katrina (shown in Tables 3.1-1 and 3.1-2 in this report), six communications gaps were identified: Interoperability, Training, Operational Guidance, Infrastructure Failure, Lack of Capacity and Access. This section specifies requirements needed to address these gaps.

4.4.1 Interoperability Gap Requirements Interoperability should be addressed at the technical, system, system of systems, federation of systems, and operational levels. Interoperability should include prioritized voice communications, and data and multimedia services, in order to allow different communities of interest (COI) to communicate together, to share information, to enable capabilities, and to access data bases. Interoperability should include the ability to use the same frequencies for initial contact and coordination and to hear key common messages. Interoperability should also allow users to communicate and share information, even though they may utilize different incompatible access modes and frequencies. Communications terminals which work in the same frequency bands, the same access mode, or are multi-mode (e.g. APCO25, WiFi) should be encouraged. Internet Protocol “bridges” between various voice systems can provide a cost effective and rapid partial step toward radio interoperability, particularly if agency frequencies and rights to use these bridge “drag and drop” tools are registered in core services before disasters. To achieve interoperability, government at all levels should require that systems and applications purchased with public funds have interfaces to current standards and commit to developing them for future ones. Purchases of multi-function proprietary solutions with public funds should be prohibited. Realizing that existing systems will continue to be used over the next decade, interoperability solutions should include these systems – if those vendors will build interfaces to the standards being developed in “the center”. This will allow them to communicate and share information with more modern communications and networking technologies.

Interoperability should bridge gaps in existing infrastructure. Preparing supporting solutions that bridge major link failures could be addressed with high bandwidth line of sight (LOS) or over the horizon solutions. Additional potential interoperability solutions include inter-connectable fly away kits with multiple communications technologies (wired, wireless, mobile, fixed), addition of airborne assets to serve as communications relays, and use of gateways.

4.4.2 Training Gap Requirements Communication equipment, like satellite terminals, and emergency software are becoming more and more varied and complex, so training becomes critical for operational efficiency in emergency situations. Training should be conducted in advance of a disaster and regularly to ensure the user can quickly use all emergency communication equipment correctly. New emergency communications equipment and software should be used regularly in an operational environment. Any communications or disaster plans must be used in training and emergency personnel must be familiar with them. Training should include the many and varied civic, federal, local, military, volunteers, and NGOs that respond to a disaster situation. Training should include the use of backup and stockpiled communications equipment and offsite core services, so if these assets are deployed, responders will be familiar with using and deploying them. This includes items such as direct mode communication, onboard car repeater, and gateways. Training on policy and procedures including manuals should be provided. This includes passwords, authentication, and security levels. Training should include how and where to get resources such as fuel, generators, batteries, and terminals. Logistics and security should be considered during training. Computer Based Training (CBT) is a consideration. CBT would allow easy cross language interoperability to the same standard for international responders. Flowcharts/flip charts with a lot of visual context should be made available to the first responder communities to allow non-technical support personnel the ability to set up and operate replacement communication infrastructure.

4.4.3 Operational Guidance Gap Requirements Having good communications is not enough for operational efficiency. Good organization, defined and understood roles and priorities, and a known command structure are also key. Operational guidance should be determined in advance, documented in easy to understand format, and used in training for prior to a disaster situation. Operational guidance should include roles and responsibilities for all of the many organizations responding to a disaster including military, political, civil, national, state, local, and NGOs. Operational guidance should include information and communications rights management for every organization involved in emergency response, both sending and receiving, recorded in the core service discussed above. Operational guidance should include frequency planning and management. Operational guidance should include asset locations, capabilities, and ownership. Operational guidance should include providing for dynamic situational awareness to responders and command and control authorities. Situational awareness includes the following: •

Communication resources availability

•

Emergency conditions such as flood water level, road conditions and accessibility

•

Ability to request resources such as terminals

•

Voice coordination channel information and status

•

To allow 911 centers to have the information necessary to direct first responders to the callers

•

Ability to reconfigure a network to increase its capacity – 911 centers access for example

•

Logistics information

•

Network Common Operational Picture (NETCOP), which decreases the confusion in description of events that are occurring in a high stress environment

4.4.4 Infrastructure Failure Gap Requirements To solve progressively the infrastructure failure gap, there should be a capability to quickly set up ad hoc networks interconnected to other ad hoc networks and remaining functional infrastructure, in order to reestablish a minimum of communications. To respond to the infrastructure failure, there should be some dynamic reconfiguration and rerouting capabilities. Hardened infrastructure and back-up infrastructure should be considered. Some critical infrastructure could be protected from flooding, and antennas can be protected from wind damage.

The capability of re-routing infrastructure should be added to all future upgrades and considered for existing infrastructure, such that failed pockets can be avoided and communications capability can still be provided. Back-up frequencies should be reserved or taken from other non-priority and communications networks if they are not already assigned for this purpose. Communications equipment should be checked regularly to ensure they are working, up to date, and well maintained. Identification and bridging of critical infrastructure gaps with equipment capable of supporting many requirements, including existing systems, should be performed. The potential of installing infrastructure specifically for first responders should be evaluated. Communications equipment should be checked regularly to ensure they are working, up to date, and well maintained. Identification and bridging of critical infrastructure gaps with equipment capability of supporting many requirements including existing systems should be performed.

4.4.5 Lack of Capacity Gap Requirements The lack of capacity gap includes the following situations: lack of original capacity to handle the disaster and congestion issues. Sufficient dimensioning of the networks to avoid congestion during a disaster should be evaluated and assessed. This means, for example, there should be sufficient radio frequency bands and the ability to reallocate existing frequency allocations to handle the traffic, even at maximum load, for first responders in the first 72 hours. Good radio planning, back up schemes, and reconfiguration plans should be in place and utilized. The access to 911 (112 in much of Europe) centers should be well dimensioned to avoid congestion, including the ability to add communications resources. The current system of a limited number of analog telephone circuits to 911 needs to be replaced with a dynamic IP network. During a disaster, priority should be given to emergency responder needs for frequency, coverage, and access. This kind of priority system needs to be built into the rights management core service described above. Certain agencies, under certain circumstances, need to be able to flag their communications traffic as top priority. This right needs to vary over time and by incident type; there is no fixed hierarchy of priority. In areas at high risk for disasters, communications and network plans should include handling emergency events, considering back-up systems and over-dimensioning to handle needs of first responders.

4.4.6 Access Gap Requirements There should be procedures and processes to allow users to access the resources they need for handling the disaster. The “agency locator” core service includes the ability of public and private organizations to register their ability to offer resources of specific types in specific geographic areas. Equipment and facilities from one COI should be accessible by other responder COIs during the disaster, so assets can be shared and stockpiles utilized. Draft resource messaging standards developed by a diverse collection of emergency response agencies are about to be issued by OASIS for public comment. They accommodate the use of multiple taxonomies. There should be national and international identification systems in place for emergency responders, so resources can be accessed and triaged to ensure critical needs are addressed first. Consider a policy driven identification system.

4.4.7 Summary of Communications Requirements Requirements to address the six identified communications gaps are stated (sections 4.4.1 through 4.4.6). These requirements are used to develop recommendations to improve communications for future disaster scenarios, with emphasis on NCOIC’s mission of interoperability and agreed standards.

5.0 Disaster Response Framework and Standards Analysis This section focuses on the standards that support sharing information for situational awareness and coordination purposes in a disaster response situation.

5.1 Information and Services Framework and Standards Analysis Overview The information provided here and in Appendix C provides an overview of the existing standards focusing on requirements for information and services architectural definition, which is based on a NIEM data element model, an EDXL (Emergency Data Exchange Language) message standard for data exchange and coordination messages, and CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) to provide alerts to the various communities.

Figure 5.1 Current Emergency Disaster Response Organizations and Areas for Standards

COMCARE

Transport Spectrum E911

Data Standards

Data Interoperability Architecture

SICoP

IPTI Integrated Patient Tracking Initiative

DHS FEMA NIM S

IDRM Web Service

SAFECOM

NEARS

DMI S

NIE M

Data Element Standard s

Connect

Interactive Data Communications

Non -Interactive Voice Communications

Non -Interactive Data Communications

NIM S

DMI Web Service s

EPAD S EPAD TI E

Interactive Voice Communications

Protecting America

EIC

VEDS

SO R

Emergency Management Organization

Specific Needs Requests

OASIS/I TU CA P

Command & Management Preparednes s Resource Management Communications & Information Supporting Ongoing Technologies & maintenance Management

National Incident Interoperability Architecture

EDX L

Many-Many Data Sharing Internet Protocols Web Services

Facilitation Directories Services Security Authorization Authentication

Diagnostics

The technical focus is on the information and services infrastructure standards, capabilities, and the architectural framework supporting emergency response coordination. The standards areas of interest for this domain include: 1.

messaging standards

meta-data standards

knowledge representation standards

web services standards

collaboration standards

information or knowledge query standards

inferencing logic standards

authorization standards

access and access rights standards

10. business process standards 11. context representation standards 12. situational awareness representation standards

5.1.1 Current Incident Interoperability Architecture Concept From an analysis of the efforts of these organizations, the following current emergency information sharing, alerting, and coordination concepts are supported by related standards and services consistent with the emergency interoperability architecture model. These include: •

The National Incident Interoperability Architecture, specified by Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC), with its mediation services (called Core Services or Facilitation Services by others)

•

COMCARE’s layered model for data interoperability, which has defined Facilitation or Core Services exactly the same as EIC’s mediation services

•

Practitioner-defined and OASIS issued messaging standards, support these interoperability approaches.

Figure 5.1.1 National Incident Interoperability Architecture Consistent with NIMS, Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC)

Figure 5.1.2

Figure 5.1.3

Figures 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 are the National Incident Interoperability Architecture Consistent with NIMS, Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC)

A note on Enterprise Services Enterprise Services are composed of Core Services, Shared Services, and Line of Business (LOB) Services. While Core Services are horizontal services that are shared and used across all domains, Shared Services are horizontal services shared across a subset of the enterprise COI and among two or more domains. A strong business case differentiates a Core Service from a Shared Service and this is explained further in the following sections. These services also include the reusable technical services that span across domains and are used to encapsulate technical functions. LOB services are vertical, intra-domain services offered within a single 9

domain.

These architecture models support a set of mediation and facilitation services to enable emergency information exchange among agencies and responders. Note in Figures 5,1,1, 5,1,2 and 5,1,3 the hierarchical layering and the separation of transport from the other interoperability layers, thus enabling the possible use of different transport networks and technologies to transport the same standardized set of information exchange messages between agencies and responders using the same services and information compatibility standards above transport layer. The data standards currently defined in messaging XML Schema standards in EDXL and CAP have been adopted as the Emergency Data set in the NIEM. The model separates data and messaging standards from the emergency information facilitation (core) services, thus enabling multiple services to be developed that leverage the same set of data and messaging standards, and enhancing a wide variety of services and applications by not requiring each to resolve directory, rights and similar issues.

http://www.comcare.org/uploads/DwarkanathPositionPaperISCRAM2006.pdf

Figure 5.1.2 COMCARE’s Approach for data interoperability

5.1.2 Current Emergency Messaging, Data and Service Standards Model The above abstract architectural views are currently supported by a number of message brokering systems including DHS’s DMIS. DMIS supports the sharing of EDXL and CAP messages and associated data elements. The NIEM model defines a set of emergency data elements that are compatible with the data schemas defined in EDXL messages. CAP defines a set of messages with XML schema data elements for alerting purposes. As discussed above in Core Services, EPAD allows agencies to register for use by DMIS or any other authorized messaging service what incidents they want to hear about, for what area they have jurisdiction, mutual aid or simply interest, at what time, and to what electronic address (or telephone number).

Figure 5.1.2.1 Current Emergency Disaster Response Servicesand Data Standards

Multiple applications and standards are involved in the above solution and are described below. 1.

Disaster Management Information Services (DMIS) – a web service that enables information sharing among agencies and responders. The approach is based on the use of W3C web service standards, e.g., WSDL, SOAP. Other private companies such as myStateUSA and NuParadigm offer functionally competing services.

EPAD – Emergency Provider Access Directory – provides contact information, incident information registration (including areas for jurisdiction, mutual aid and interest), and electronic delivery address(es), including telephone number if requested, for response agencies.

OASIS EDXL- DE –emergency data exchange language distributional element, international standard for routing “header” for any emergency messaging payload, specified as an XML schema

OASIS CAP -- Common Alerting Protocol, international standard for public and agency alerting, specified as an XML schema.

DRAFT EDXL–RM – resource message standards carried by EDXL message containers (EDXL-DE) specified as an XML schema, about to be put out for public comment by OASIS.

DRAFT EDXL–HAVE – hospital resource message standards carried by EDXL message containers (EDXLDE) specified as an XML schema, about to be put out for public comment by OASIS.

NIEM - National Information Exchange Model – defines a set of core data element definitions for use in multiple domains; currently almost solely the Global Justice data dictionary, but intended to be a comprehensive semantic solution.

ISDEM - Information System for Disaster and Emergency Management – which defines a series of common codes/symbols understandable by different national first responders who interoperate, the TOS (Tactical Situation Object). This is being standardized at CEN (European Centre for Norms) before going to ITU through OASIS or ISO.

DEMS - Disaster and Emergency Management System – which is the Information Technology framework based on an open and flexible architecture and using standards, existing or proposed by OASIS, that will be the basis of a European Disaster and Emergency Management system. The intention is to facilitate cooperation between the information systems used by civil protection organizations, in a local, regional, national or international environment. This Disaster and Emergency Management System aims at supporting response operations for large scale and local emergencies.

10. EMTEL - Emergency Telecommunications –the ETSI SDO group capturing users requirements and scenarios for first responders, administrators, individuals, agencies, SADP,…The technical requirements are set up related to communications in emergency and disaster situations and mapped to existing standards with a gap analysis.

5.1.3 Current Information and Services Architecture and Standards Weaknesses From an analysis of current standards it is clear that the level of semantic interoperability defined is not sufficient to ensure mutually consistent interpretation of exchanged data in all circumstances by participating responder organizations and individuals. This approach will have even greater impact as engineers develop emergency response web services to support emergency response coordination. The overall intent of these standards is to enable sharing of knowledge about an evolving emergency situation network, which is actually comprised of discrete and possibly interdependent coordination activities by multiple sets of responders and organizations, which in turn derived their coordination situation knowledge from data evaluations of standard XML formatted emergency messages. It is this interpretation and lack of semantic definitions for exchanged data that can lead to misinterpretation. In addition, it is proposed that responder network situation knowledge should be further extended with higher level semantic definitions to assist in the identification of coordination anomalies, states of completion, resources committed, and relationships to incident focus problems. This layered semantic framework could be created based on existing W3C ontology language standards such as OWL. The resulting semantic knowledge framework can be of benefit for developing incident coordination requirements, developing semantic information interoperability standards, developing information services, assisting communities of emergency response planners in defining their information interdependencies, and assisting architects, system integrators, and design engineers in developing technical solutions.

A number of weaknesses or gaps are noted with the current approach: 1.

The importance and efficiencies of using shared services among domains is not recognized.

There is a lack of inter-domain or domain-independent models

Data is defined as data elements in message structures, rather than as data schemas without consideration of a message, thus limiting its use to defined message standards

The semantic descriptions of the data elements in the message schemas are inadequate to enable consistent interpretation by application developers or service developers, or by responders with respect to its intent.

Messages are not related to each other in any way except by message ID.

No standards were used or selected to represent higher levels of semantic expressiveness in a data model, e.g., RDF, OWL

There is no directory structure within DMIS to enable service discovery

The architecture does not specifically illustrate how information sharing takes place among response agencies in any dynamic adaptive manner where the information sharing needs are changing with the situation, evidently requiring reestablishing sharing profiles in DMIS. No protocol is defined to accomplish this requirement.

Coordination information is not specified by the services or the message standards, so that there is no way to determine the relationships of responders, resources and incident response actions as the emergency disaster situation evolves, except by reviewing and reading many messages to find these associations.

5.1.4 Semantic Interoperability Recommendations The NCOIC proposes that a semantic information architecture be created that enables more effective Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response coordination by extending and transforming existing metadata standards such as NIEM, EDXL and CAP into a set of semantic ontologies within an overall semantic knowledge architecture model. The lack of current and relevant emergency information for alerts, situation status, coordination of assets and response illustrated a real need as evidenced by the problems of Hurricane Katrina. There were many reasons for coordination problems during Hurricane Katrina, but one of the most critical was the inability to share relevant information among emergency response personnel and organizations during all operational phases of the disaster response.

5.1.4.1 Information and Service Framework Recommendations 1.

Semantic information architecture should be created that enables more effective Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response coordination by extending and transforming existing metadata standards such as NIEM, EDXL and CAP into a set of semantic ontologies within an overall semantic knowledge architecture model.

Semantic knowledge model should be created for each responder domain where each domain semantic model utilizes the XML schema data elements of EDXL and CAP.

NIEM should be harmonized with the EDXL and CAP XML Schema data elements

The domain dependent information models and standards should be based on domain independent ubiquitous W3C standards such as XML Schema, RDF and OWL.

Service descriptions should be based on the W3C WSDL standards and the data elements passed in the message should be harmonized with the domain dependent XML schema data elements.

A directory should be available to enable discovery of data, both knowledge base facts and metadata, by user agents and web services.

Metadata should be defined, based on W3C RDF/OWL standards for context information that enables discovery of relevant knowledge about situation, response coordination activities, agent context information and other dynamic knowledge that could provide guidance to the interpretation of messages and coordination decisions.

An integrated semantic hierarchical ontology model, based on W3C OWL DL standards, should define the relationships between the information concepts across domains and enable logical reasoning to support different purposes, agent coordination, resource management, etc.

Each domain specific OWL ontology should have its vocabulary and namespace imported from the EDXL and CAP and NIEM XML schemas

10. The EPAD core service should be confirmed and tested in the ability to support dynamic team formation and collaboration among responders in a coordinated fashion, along with the parallel rights management core service. 11. All information created and added to the shared storage knowledge base should have context information attributed to it to enable information authentication and determination of relevancy. 12. Agent access interface to shared knowledge base should support automatic query generation with consistent use of vocabulary and concepts contained in the shared knowledge semantic model ontology specifications. 13. All knowledge sharing and queries should be made via a set of web services designed to provide mediation and transformation capabilities between the semantic knowledge models and the user devices and display capability.

The following diagrams illustrate our recommendations as a framework. Figure 5.1.4.1 Information and Services Emergency Disaster Response Framework – Command and Control and Communications

5.1.4.2 Emergency Semantic Coordination Framework As mentioned earlier an Emergency Semantic Coordination Framework can be used to improve the coordination and preplanning of emergency response activities. This architectural definition can be a hierarchical semantic interoperability framework that will provide knowledge about an evolving emergency network coordination situation space, which is comprised of discrete and possibly interdependent coordination patterns and activities, which in turn derive their coordination situation knowledge from semantic evaluations of standard XML formatted emergency messages. This framework should be further extended with higher level semantic definitions to enable and assist in the identification of coordination anomalies, states of completion, resources committed, and relationships to incident focus problems. This semantic framework can benefit •

Developing incident coordination requirements,

•

Developing semantic information interoperability standards,

•

Developing information services, for assisting communities of emergency response planners in defining their information interdependencies, and in assisting architects, system integrators, and design engineers in developing technical solutions.

These are possible by extending and transforming existing metadata standards such as NIEM, EDXL and CAP into a set of semantic ontologies and developing a semantic knowledge based framework on top of that, for the purpose of capturing and representing the evolving emergency coordination situation. This semantic layered framework can not only be used to enable monitoring of the overall coordination situation, but also can be used to create and represent knowledge about specific emergency coordination response plans for various emergency incident scenarios. This provides the emergency response coordination managers the ability to instantaneously call up a model and checklist of the coordination activities that should take place for an emergency incident event, to use this information to manage and coordinate the overall response, and to observe and analyze how the evolving coordination sequence corresponds with the response plan.

Figure 5.1.4.2 Emergency Response Services and Information Semantic Framework

5.2 Communications Recommendations Recommendations were generated in response to the communications incidents from Katrina (detailed analysis data tables are in Appendix A, Table AA 18.1), the resultant gaps (section 3.1.2) and requirements (section 4.4). The recommendations affect preparations to be done in advance of a disaster as well as responses within the first 72 hours after a disaster. The recommendations are ranked in order of highest priority first. Because these recommendations are multinational, some tailoring may be applicable, based on factors such as the adopting countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s level of development, type of government, degree of military involvement, and amount and type of communications capabilities. Many of the gaps can be addressed by specifying and adopting agreed-to interoperable communications standards common to emergency responders at the federal, state, and local levels, utilization of communications gateways, development of communications fly-away kits, and funding for upgrading communications systems to more modern technology. The recommendations are listed below, with the detailed analysis tables in Appendix A, Table AA 18.2. 1.

Create a governance structure that includes national, military, state, and local authorities, first responders, traffic control, and search and rescue personnel.

Develop interagency communications plan that includes national, military, state, local, search and rescue, and traffic control. Include terrestrial, airborne, and maritime users. Train and operate to this plan

Develop fly-away communications kits to include local LOS, mid-range, terrestrial, and long range over the horizon capability. Pre-place in high incident areas plus stockpile reserve

Provide training for communications system users

Incorporate interoperability gateways as needed to enhance interoperability with existing communications systems. The Communications Airborne Node (CAN) could serve as a gateway

Use High Altitude Platform (UAV, airplane, balloon) as an airborne router to tie together separated landbased wireless groups

Develop online inventory of all emergency communications assets and their locations, accessible to emergency responders. This includes national, military, state, and local deployed assets, and stockpiled and reserve assets. Terrestrial, airborne, and maritime assets are included. Train and operate to this plan.

Establish regional alliances where communities agree to share assets and provide aid during emergencies.

Develop a national ID system for emergency responders that is based on Personal Identification Standards (PIV) and that defines prioritization of information access incorporating the HSPD-12 PIV tokens and requirements.

10. Develop interoperable communications standards to be utilized by federal, state, and local emergency responders. 11. Develop Frequency Management Plan: Temporarily allocate additional mutual aid channels. Temporarily allocate a portion of HDTV frequencies for emergency response. 12. Use battery backed communications equipment. 13. Utilize radio systems with in-building capabilities. 14. Provide wireless capable laptops with satellite GSM card to emergency responders. 15. Health care organizations develop a disaster recovery plan for their electronic patient records. Train and operate to this plan. 16. Develop integrated emergency communications system interoperability and migration plan at the national, state, and local levels. Build new / upgrade existing communications capabilities to these plans. 17. Allocate funding to update emergency communications systems to agreed to standards and implementation / migration plan (inch broadband capabilities). 18. Develop national inter-state network (highway) system that can be used for emergency response. 19. Provide redundant / backup communications.

Figure 5.2.2 Candidate communications technologies for emergency response.

5.3 Communications Interoperability Standards Analysis For Phase 1, the purpose of communications interoperability standards is to provide voice, video, and data communications among emergency responders, both interactive and non-interactive, at all levels in a heterogeneous environment. To determine the standards, an analysis of communications needs is performed. This includes identification of who needs to communicate, as indicated in the outermost blue circle in Figure 5-3 below, and the necessary communications services to be provided, identified in subsequent paragraphs in this section. This information is used to develop a communications model. The model for Communications Interoperability standards recommended by the NCOIC is applications running over an IP backbone accessed by many devices, using Interoperability gateways (e.g. waveform adapters) to provide interoperability as needed. The gateways provide interoperable communications for 1) multiple types of physical and link layer technologies and 2) IP capable and non-IP capable devices. While this is our model, in the first 72 hours after the disaster, the main goal is to provide voice, video and data communications among heterogeneous emergency responders, which may mean that in the near term, IP-based communications are provided only at the gateway and not in the access networks at ground zero.

Figure 5.3 Communications Interoperability Model

MECI Protocol Functional Collections Primary & Armies

Secondary Medical Services

Navies

LEGEND

Law Enforcement Agencies

Air Force s

HFN IP Network Communications Backbone (core), and interfaces to surviving mobile network infrastructure

EMTs

Coast Guard

E911 Station s

IP Network Backbone

*C2 Capability *Other applicable current and new technologies

Untraine d Civilians

Su bn ets Red Cross & Crescent & Related NGOs

National Civil Agencie s Fire Departments Provincial & State ParaMilitaries

Provincial & State Civil Agencies

HFN IP Subnets HFN Communications (IP and Waveform) Gateways to the HFN IP Subnets and Backbone HFN COIs and Radio Nets

Access to surviving cellular and terrestrial networks, if any

The communications transport services to be provided for Phase 1 include Interactive, non-interactive, multicast, broadcast, nicest voice / video / data PTT and walkie-talkie. The network support services to be provided for Phase 1 include: •

addressing / auto configuration

•

domain name services

•

secure / standard time

•

waveform and IP interoperability gateway

The community of interest (COI) services include agency frequencies and rights management. The applications for which transport will be provided include videoconferencing, instant message, streaming media, voice over IP (VoIP), web browsing, and file transfer.

5.3.1 Project 25 Project 25 is a joint effort of the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO), the National Association of State Telecommunications Directors (NASTD), selected federal agencies and the National Communications System (NCS). These organizations recognized the need for common standards for first responders and homeland security/emergency response professionals and established Project 25, a steering committee for selecting voluntary common system standards for digital public safety radio communications. P25 is applicable to land mobile radio (LMR) equipment authorized or licensed in the U.S. under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules and regulations. P25 is specifying standards for the interfaces as noted in the following graphic. However, to date, only the Common Air Interface standard has been developed and approved. Also, APCO 25 evolves in Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) to wideband and broadband wireless new standards allowing increased data rates and performance while being adapted for use in harsh conditions.

Figure 5.3.1 Project 25 Interface Standards Work

5.4 Candidate Communications Standards Much work remains to be done in the identification, selection, and widespread adoption of communications interoperability standards. The goal of this section is to integrate the results of the various standards efforts and document a proposed set of standards, specified in figure 5.4 below. The candidate standards in the figure below were selected based upon current usage within industry and experiences in recent disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or disaster training exercises such as Strong Angel III, as determined from references (see References Appendix of this document,) and examination of products from NCOIC member companies. The emphasis is on wireless communications since Phase 1 assumes no existing infrastructure, although some common wireline standards are also included. Figure 5.4 Proposed Communications Standards

Network Support to Apps (e.g Multicast, VoIP)

SIP, PIM -SM, MSDP, PIM -SSM, RTP, SCIP, IGMP/MLD, OSPF, BGP

Network Services

NTP, DDNS, DHCP, DHCPv6, ISSI

Transport Layer

UDP, TCP, SCTP, TLS

Network Layer

Data Link Physical

IPv4, IPv6, IPSec, ICMP

Interoperability Gateway

802.11, 802.16, Cellular, P25, Ethernet, PPP, DirectMode Comm , 380 -470 MHz, TETRA, mutual aid channels, T -1 L-band / UHF / Ku band SATCOM, VSAT, BGAN

These standards provide for IP-based communication (e.g. 802.11 and 802.16), and also accommodate non-IP based communications equipment currently in use by many first responders (e.g. 800 MHz LMR systems). 380470 MHz is the frequency used by the European Union (EU) for LMR, which is IP capable. In order to take advantage of any existing cellular infrastructure and ubiquitous cell phones, cellular is a recommended standard. Cellular communication emergency kits can be brought in to take the place of or augment existing cellular infrastructure.

Satellite communications using Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) or Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) terminals are recommended to provide long haul reach-back as well as local communications if there is no communications infrastructure. Commercial communications satellites currently in use operate in L band and Ku band. UHF Satcom is recommended for integration with military units. C-band Satcom is in use in some countries to provide high capacity where rain fade could be an issue. T-1 lines can provide long haul reach-back also. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control protocol that can establish, modify and terminate multimedia sessions or calls. SIP provides signaling for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications and is specified in RFC 2543. Real Time Protocol (RTP) provides end-to-end network transport functions for applications transmitting real-time data such as audio, video or simulation data, over multicast or nicest network services. RTP does not address resource reservation and does not guarantee quality-of- service for real-time services. The data transport is augmented by a control protocol (RTCP) to allow monitoring of data delivery in a scalable manner. RTP is specified in RFC 1889. RTP is used for multicast and VoIP. Protocol Independent Multicast – Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Protocol Independent Multicast – Source Specific Multicast (PIM-SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) are the protocols supporting IP multicast. PIM-SM is used extensively in today’s internet, and supports one -to-many and many –to-many multicast models. MSDP is used only in Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and interconnects multiple PIM-SM domains. This allows for discovery of rendezvous points (RPs) in other domains, enabling inter-domain multicasting and rendezvous point redundancy. PIM-SSM is simpler than PIM-SM and supports the one-tomany model. PIM-SSM is targeted for audio and video broadcast. Secure Communication Interoperability Protocol (SCIP) is a NATO standard and also in use by the US Government. SCIP is a standard for secure wideband and narrowband voice and data communication, and is a replacement for Future Narrowband Digital Terminal (FNBDT). SCIP defines a secure interoperable architecture that will allow any organization to build interoperable solutions to a common set of architectural and protocol standards. Security is provided through the PKI/KMI model for cryptographic key exchange. Coupled with the ability to include any number of different cryptographic algorithms (within the constraints of the protocols), this allows many distinct enclaves. Initially, the network backbone is envisioned to be IPv4 based with a migration plan to IPv6. Any equipment purchased in the near term should be IPv6 capable. Security is provided at the Network Layer via IP Security (IPSec). Security is provided at the Transport Layer via Transport Layer Security. This secures the socket interface between Communications and Information & Services. While the capability will be provided, the users have the option operationally to activate the feature or not, depending on the situation. Providing security in the first 72 hours of a disaster is controversial – in some instances such as a terrorist attack or to interoperate with specific organizations, security is necessary. In other instances, the situation does not warrant the additional overhead and loss of user bandwidth.

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used to synchronize the clocks of computers over a network. NTP version 3 is currently in use and a standard defined by RFC 1305. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and its IP version 6 counterpart (IPv6), DHCPv6, are used for automated IP address assignment. Dynamic Domain Name Service (DDNS) maps Internet domain names to IP addresses DDNS works with dynamic IP addressing, which seems likely to occur in a disaster scenario as people join and leave the network over the course of disaster operations. Inter Sub-System Interface (ISSI) is an interface standard between different RF systems developed by TIA as a part of the P25 project. ISSI provides interoperability between communication systems using a common protocol but different technologies, different manufacturers, or different RF bands. The protocol and message structure, mobility management, wide area service management, and intervening network adaptation are elements of the ISSI definition and specification. Multiple communications options are suggested, to include satellite, cellular, IP subnets, LMR, and landlines. The purpose is to take advantage of existing equipment, take advantage of existing infrastructure that is still operational after the disaster, and to provide diversity to allow for maximum capability and allowance for contingencies.

6.0 NCOIC MECI Findings and Recommendations 6.1 Findings Many initial responders and related emergency response organizations have developed a consensus for data and messaging and services standards that comprise the building blocks for enabling emergency disaster response services within many application contexts. It is not necessary for specifiers of communications to support these communities of interest to deal with every possible standard and best practice to achieve a high degree of MERCI. Rather, the specifiers need only know if a product complies with interoperable standards to a significant way and have the ability to determine the product’s NCO readiness, i.e., interoperability potential. If a system does not implement the appropriate domain independent and domain dependent information, messaging and service standards, than it cannot be a building block in an open network. The dependency upon communication layers is very loose. The Emergency Disaster Response service and information layers can work on multiple communication standards. There is nothing in the service and information standards that require specific communication layer standards, only that its messages associated with interactions are transported reasonably from a performance perspective.

6.1.1 Issues with Civil/Military cooperation (CIMIC) for response to CHD The need for civil/military cooperation to deal effectively with complex humanitarian disasters (CHD) is proven beyond doubt by events of recent history. Without the international civil/military responder cooperation that did take place, loss of life would undoubtedly have been much greater. The operative question is: Why isn’t there more and better civil/military cooperation to respond to CHD? One answer is that there are cultural, technical and proficiency disparities between civilian and military forces responding to CHD that are as challenging as dealing with the CHD itself. Non-trivial cultural differences exist between military and civil disaster response organizations. All responders to a CHD event must quickly adapt to a dynamic chain of command and an evolving situation. One challenge for these personnel is that significant technical and procedural differences exist in the capabilities of disaster response organizations, e.g., police, fire and medical communities. Also, civilian responder communities often do not have the resources or training needed to deal with large scale CHDs, and may not realize this fact until embroiled in the event. Military forces often must be invited by civil government officials to engage, and senior leadership must agree. This process is often ad hoc, and can lead to further confusion.

Further, all parties have to recognize that military forces are instruments of their national policies. Within the United States for example, federal armed forces cannot currently be used for policing activities as a matter of law and policy. Thus, sensitivity to political realities must combine with the humanitarian imperative. The ideal environment for civil/military cooperation complies with the guidelines issued by the United Nations on 20 March 2003:

“A humanitarian operation using military assets must retain its civilian nature and character, while military assets will remain under military control. The operation as a whole must remain under the overall authority and control of the responsible humanitarian agency (HA). This does not infer any civilian command and control over military assets.”

For these reasons, US armed forces deployed to respond to CHD usually coordinate their activities through the State Department, the US embassy in the affected nation and the US Agency for International Development. These civilian departments do the initial coordination with the HAs. Allied governments function similarly. Achieving these sometimes competing goals requires that all parties understand that the effectiveness of CIMIC operations depends largely on discipline and skill acquired through rigorous training. Effective response to CHD, as is the case with effective combat operations, requires all parties be trained and equipped to achieve persistent, broad situational awareness immediately after the event. To achieve this awareness, all responders need training to ask and get answers to six basic questions: What happened? Where did it happen? Who and what are available to respond? Where are they? How quickly can they get here? If they aren’t enough, how can we get more? The body of doctrine and best practices that best enables answers to these questions and thus facilitates effective civil/military response to CHD is known as Network-Centric Operations, or NCO; itself based on the more specific tenets of Network-Centric Warfare (NCW), i.e. •

A robustly networked force improves information sharing,

•

Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness,

•

Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command,

•

These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

Network Centric Warfare – Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, 2 Edition Revised, D.S. Alberts, J.J. Garstka, F.P. Stein, CCRP, 1999

They key to understanding this revolutionary development is that it is not just about technology but also about human behavior. A seminal thinker in NCO theory, the late Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, USN, frequently observed the word “network” is both a noun and a verb. A platform is a noun. When used as a verb, “to network,” we are talking about information movement and management, not systems. The evolution from platform-centricity to network-centricity is a shift from focusing on things to focusing on behavior. The natural human tendency to do what one has experience doing and to resist change is a challenge to civil/military cooperation that application of NCO principles addresses both culturally and technically. Effective NCO planning for civil/military cooperation in CHD response will allow otherwise disparate systems and their users to collaborate with moderate changes to the way people are used to working together. The result is shared situational awareness and a much more robust common operational picture among military and civil responders.

6.2 Issues with CIMIC in NATO There are many challenges in NATO today stemming from the addition of several former countries of the Warsaw Pact becoming full-fledged members. Already challenged by the demands of enabling network-enabled capabilities (NEC) (CIMIC)

among the many disparate national militaries of the Alliance, civil/military cooperation

for response to CHD is an additional burden that must be addressed. CIMIC for CHD response, as

noted in previous sections of this study, requires the quick establishment of a common operational picture (COP) through widely shared situational awareness. Frequently, the information gathered by one member of the Alliance in response to a CHD event is not posted in a predetermined, easily accessible location. Details of infrastructure damage, casualties and logistics are usually not available as “pushed” information to all interested Alliance members. Instead, the NATO members attempting to respond to a CHD event often find themselves challenged to intercommunicate in ways strikingly similar to the communications challenges experienced by initial responders to the Katrina CHD, as detailed in previous sections of this study. As noted in the previous section, civil humanitarian agencies frequently are suspicious of military operations, however well intentioned. Military response to a CHD, especially in European countries, is almost always related to security matters. Both entities in CIMIC operations want and need the information the other develops, for example, about logistics for medical supplies, power supplies, water supplies, evacuation capabilities etc. In a number of prior attempts by NATO to engage in CIMIC operations with NGOs, the confusion generated in the population affected by the CHD event from multiple entities asking the same information to establish a COP and broad situational awareness has actually exacerbated the problems of the victims. It has been noted that the failure to effectively gather intelligence and share it with all who need to know causes the victim communities to become suspicious and frustrated by the experience and, not infrequently, angry with the international responder communities.

Network-enabled Capability (NEC) is the term used by most European members of NATO that can be considered in this study equivalent to NetworkCentric Operations (NCO) in the United States and Canada. 12 Civil Military Cooperation (CIMIC) is the NATO term for the planning and conduct of all interaction between the military and the civil sector during military operations. It is increasingly being used for purely civil/military cooperation to CHD that have no preplanned military operations.

All of the communications and information sharing challenges experienced by the initial responder communities to the 9-11 terrorist attacks in New York, the South Asia tsunami, the Kashmir earthquakes and the Katrina CHD are regularly experienced by NATO attempts to mount multi-national CIMIC operations for exactly the same reasons. The goal of MECI, self-synchronizing interoperability of otherwise disparate communication systems and information services, is as great a challenge within NATO as it is anywhere. The near-term solutions to these challenges, and the technical and policy gaps to long-term MECI, described previously in this study, apply fully to NATO. Several studies to address these challenges within NATO have been undertaken – some continue today – with four crucial elements described to enhance information sharing and MECI in a CIMIC response to a CHD event. An information/communications architecture for NATO CIMIC must have: 1.

Visibility and understanding by all participants in a CIMIC CHD response of the other participants,

Unclassified and declassified information from the military elements of a CIMIC CHD response must be synthesized and formatted in such a way that both receiving military participants and all civil components can use the information with minimal manipulation

All participants must be confident in the accuracy of the information received,

Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) for CIMIC operations should be established across all the NATO membership. MOE are essential to continuous process improvement in any significant undertaking. They are especially important in an organizational structure as complex as NATO.

An example of a recently established organization that attempts MOE for CIMIC is the US Military’s Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC). CMOC is the coordinator of US military assets with civil relief entities. Its use is now part of US military doctrine. A lesson learned from CMOC operations, among other things, is the need for institutional, doctrinal interactions among all military and civil entities likely to work together for CHD response. This need requires technology, especially MECI and information services sharing, to be integrated and jointly evolved. To achieve the goal of MECI and broad information sharing in CIMIC CHD responses five recommendations are made: 1.

NATO and all interested civil CHD response entities should develop and implement information services and MECI governance policies.

Establish NATO-wide MOE to evaluate CIMIC responses to CHD events, wherever NATO is involved.

Train to the plan based on items one and two. All parties to a CIMIC operation should endeavor to train together as often as possible.

Recognizing that the best can be the enemy of the good, that there is mutual distrust between civil and military organizations, especially when it comes to information sharing, solve as much of the problem that can be solved with COTS and prudent best practices. Cooperate to fill the gaps to effective MECI and

information sharing during CIMIC operations. Doing so will require that all involved accept common architecture, common platforms, and common networks and common data standards. NATO leaders are pursuing these goals while training to engage in CIMIC operations with existing technical and doctrinal approaches. Some examples of recent CIMIC/CHD response exercises involving NATO in 2006 are: Multinational Planning Augmentation Team - US Pacific Command and Center of Excellence-sponsored program for coordinating regional military response to humanitarian emergencies. Location: Kuala Lumpur. Allied Reach - NATO High level seminar/exercise for senior military officers sponsored by Allied Command Transformation. Emphasis is placed on civil-military cooperation. Location: Norfolk, Virginia. Tempest Express - Disaster response planning exercise involving more than 20 Asian nations. USPACOM sponsored CPX. NATO participated as an observer. Location: Bangkok. MNE 4 NATO - experimental exercise to test the draft Concept for Effects Based Approach to Operations from a civil military coordination perspective. Location: Istanbul. Geneva Game - The Geneva Center for Security Policy annually sponsors an exercise involving peace support operations that incorporates refugee and displaced persons issues. NATO participation as well as individual NATO member national participation. Representatives from more than 25 nations participate. Location: Geneva. Fuerzas Aliadas Humanitarias - Caribbean and Latin American nations’ emergency response organizations participated in a disaster relief simulation with emphasis on consequence management. The exercise was hosted by the government of Honduras. In addition to OCHA, WFP, PAHO, OAS, OFDA, Red Cross, CEPREDENAC, CDERA and other organizations, NATO also participated as an observer. Location: Tegucigalpa. Steadfast Jackpot - NATO JTF/NRF certification for Joint Forces Command Brunssum. Several NATO nations participated in a Chapter VII scenario with extensive refugee and displaced persons activities. Location: Stavanger, Norway. Steadfast Jaguar - NRF VII certification field exercise. UN mandated peacekeeping operation simulated a volcanic eruption with emergency disaster response requirements. More than 7,500 NATO troops participated. Location: Cape Verde.

6.3 Recommendations The best means to achieve the goal of rapidly providing emergency response agencies responding to a CHD with the necessary communications is the deployment of hastily-formed networks (HFN), the technology of which is based on open standards, employing well defined best practices for use. The term “hastily-formed networks” originated at the United States Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey California. The NPS definition of HFN, which is adopted as stated by the NCOIC, follows:

An HFN has five elements: it is (1) a network of people established rapidly (2) from different communities, (3) working together in a shared conversation space (4) in which they plan, commit to, and execute actions, (5) to fulfill a large, urgent mission. An HFN is thus much more than a set of organizations using advanced networking technology. To be effective in action, HFN participants must be skilled at •

Setting up mobile communication and sensor systems,

•

Conducting interagency operations, sometimes called “civil-military boundary”,

•

Collaborating on action plans and coordinating their execution,

•

Improvising, and,

•

Leading a social network, where communication and decision-making are decentralized, and there is no hierarchical chain of command or ex officio leader.”

6.4 The Naval Postgraduate School Master’s Thesis of Captain David D. Lancaster, USMC, “Developing a Fly-Away-Kit (FLAK) to support hastily-formed networks for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.” The referenced PDF is copied on the same CD as this document.

Source: Denning, Peter J. Hastily Formed Networks. ACM Communications 49, 4 (April 2006), 15-20.

7.0 Appendices A: Tables of analysis data for sections 3, 4 and 5.

Chapter 18 Analysis

Chart AA 18.0

The data populating the above chart is based on the following table which itself is based on analysis of the findings in Chapter 18 of the Senate Katrina study focusing on communication that negatively affected responder efficiency. This table mainly lists the primary incidents that caused communication failure in different levels such as Government, Responders and General Public in different networks and services.

Chapter Page 18-1a

Incidents

Communications Failures

In New Orleans, Mayor Nagin’s command center at the Hyatt Regency Hotel lost all communicatio ns. Before the flooding, but after landfall, Mayor Nagin had to walk across the street to City Hall in order to speak to city emergency managers. One phone line in the Mayor’s room in the Hyatt would sometimes connect a call out but could not receive incoming calls. It was not until Thursday, September 1, three days after landfall, that the Mayor’s command center began to receive emails. On Friday, September 2, the White House provided the Mayor with a mobile phone but he had to lean out of stormdamaged rooms at the hotel in hopes of getting a signal on it.

PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data/Broadcast

User Government

Cause Infrastructure Failure

Chapter Page 18-1b

Incidents The Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness for St. Bernard Parish Louisiana, lost phone and cellular communicatio ns on Monday afternoon following landfall. Later that night, the emergency radio system went down, and he was left without any communicatio ns until August 31.He went up to the roof of his building with his family when the water started to rise, received word of the levees breaching from Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries officials who rode by in boats.

Communications Failures PSTN/Cellular/Radio Voice

User Government

Cause Infrastructure Failure

Chapter Page 18-2a

Incidents The Louisiana officials in charge of evacuating the Tulane Medical Center received oral authorization from the State Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to use buses in the possession of the National Guard to evacuate the patients. When the National Guard asked for proof of authorization, the head of the rescue team could not get through to the State EOC on his cell phone. Without the use of the buses, the rescue team resorted to evacuating the patients in the back of pick-up trucks, with wheelchairs, stretchers, and other equipment loaded into boats pulled behind the trucks.

Communications Failures Cellular Voice/Data

User Responder

Cause Infrastructure Failure

Chapter Page

Incidents

Communications Failures

User

Cause

18-2b

Part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Advance Emergency Response Team at the Superdome estimated that the lack of effective communicatio ns at the Superdome reduced FEMA’s effectivenes s by 90 percent.

Radio Voice

Responder

Interoperability Radios failed to communicate .

18-2c

With the loss of phone and computer capabilities, the only way FEMA officials in Harrison County, Mississippi could track water, food, and other requested relief supplies was to send a police car to the distribution center at Stennis Space Center, located in Hancock County, near Louisiana, so that they could communicat e using the police car’s radio.

PSTN/ Cellular /Data

Responder

Lack of Capacity Degradation of services. Requiring use of only available means Radio

Chapter Page 18-2d

Incidents The Federal Coordinating Officer at the State EOC in Baton Rouge, described being in a “black hole,” unable to communicate with either New Orleans or the FEMA regional office in Denton, Texas after landfall.

Communications Failures PSTN/Cellular/Radio Voice/Data

User Government

Cause Infrastructure Failure

Chapter Page 18-2e

Incidents

Communications Failures

Health-care PSTN/Cellular/Internet providers’ Data inability to Information Sharing share data complicated the task of caring for thousands of patients and others injured during the storm. Injured citizens from the Gulf Coast were being treated at many different locations, often far from their homes, sometimes in other states. The lack of an interoperable data system often prevented medical personnel from obtaining information about patients, even if their facility had suffered no hurricane damage. To complicate matters further, no continuous records were kept to identify and track patients, or the treatment they received. Often the identification -andtracking system consisted of paper stapled to victims’ bed sheets or taped to Findings and Recommendations for Mobile Emergency their Communications bodies. Interoperability (MECI) Copyright © 2007. Network Centric Operations Industry One hospital Consortium, Inc.™ All rights reserved. Approved for Public Release: NCOIC March 1, 2007 official found that the only

User Responder

Cause Interoperability Inability to share data on patients and lack of interoperable data systems. Loss of all forms of communicati on and data sharing

Chapter Page

Incidents

Communications Failures

User

Cause

18-3a

BellSouth lost service 33 switching centers due to water damage and 180 centers lost commercial power

PSTN/Cellular/Internet/911 Voice/Data

General Public/ Responder/Government

Infrastructure Failure

18-4a

Over 1,000 of some 7,000 cellular towers in the affected area were knocked out of service. Some of the switching centers that connected to cellular towers were flooded, while others were damaged by high winds. To restore cellular coverage, cellular providers brought in over 100 portable cellular towers, called cellular on wheels or cellular on light truck, to the Gulf Coast. Each portable tower provided cellular coverage over a limited area on a temporary basis.

Cellular Voice/Data

General Public Responder Government

Infrastructure Failure

Chapter Page 18-4b

Incidents The generators supplying power to the central offices had limited fuel supply, and needed to be replenished about every three days. BellSouth obtained fuel trucks to top off its generators, proceeding into New Orleans with an armed convoy. Other companies had problems obtaining fuel for their generators. For example, Cox Louisiana Telecom LLC, which serves 85,000 customers, had fuel trucks that were destined for switch facilities intercepted by FEMA and turned away. FEMA also took fuel away from technicians with service trucks in the field. In addition, FEMA commandeer ed a fuel tanker from BellSouth in order to refuel helicopters.

Communications Failures PSTN/Cellular/Internet/911 Voice/Data

User General Public Responder Government

Cause Operational Guidance Coordination of Logistical support for 1st responders was unclear and lead to resource related outages.

Chapter Page 18-4c

Incidents Repair workers also had difficulty gaining access to their equipment and facilities in the field because police and National Guard in some cases refused to let them enter the disaster area. MCI sought a letter from Governor Blanco to access parts of New Orleans based on a requirement from the Louisiana State Police and Verizon Wireless wanted access and security for technicians restoring cellular service in New Orleans. Industry representati ves said that their technicians would benefit from having uniform credentialing that is recognized by the multiple lawenforcement agencies operating in a disaster area.

Communications Failures PSTN/Cellular/Internet/911 Voice/Data

User General Public Responder Government

Cause Access No uniform credentialing that is recognized by the multiple lawenforcement agencies operating in a disaster area.

Chapter Page 18-4d

Incidents Along with the destruction of commercial lines, Katrina decimated the towers and electronic equipment that support land mobile radio systems, the primary means of communicati on for first responders. This made it difficult for officials at all levels of government to communicat e. Indeed, officials from NOPD, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries, and the Louisiana National Guard testified that their law enforcement and searchand-rescue efforts were hindered by lack of communicatio n

Communications Failures Radio Voice/Data

User Responder

Cause Infrastructure Failure

Chapter Page

Incidents

Communications Failures

User

Cause

18-5a

Government officials at the Louisiana State EOC in Baton Rouge had trouble communicati ng with those in the disaster area. State and local emergency operations centers were left in a “communicati ons void,” often unable to communicate with first responders or to relay requests for assistance up the chain of command. Part of the problem was serious call congestion on surviving land lines.

PSTN/Cellular/Radio Voice/Data

Responder Government

Infrastructure Failure Lack of Capacity Congestion

18-5b

BellSouth said that it tried to reroute calls around damaged infrastructur e, and the State EOC eventually had more lines installed to provide additional capacity

Radio Voice/Data

Responder

Infrastructure Failure Lack of Capacity Congestion

Chapter Page 18-5c

Incidents Along with first responder communicati ons, Katrina wreaked havoc on the 911 systems on which the public relies to contact first responders in the first place. During the Katrina crisis, 911 was unavailable for untold numbers of victims. At least 38 of the 911 centers in the region lost their ability to function during Katrina.

Communications Failures PSTN/911 Voice/Data

User Gen Public Responder

Cause Infrastructure Failure

100

Chapter Page 18-6a

Incidents When 911 systems go down, some call centers still reroute calls to other centers. However, telecommunic ators on the receiving end did not have access to maps, data, and other information necessary to direct first responders to callers in need of help. Also, only the voice is rerouted, while critical data (e.g., electronic information about a call’s point of origin) is not rerouted. Although in many cases, due to the widespread destruction in Louisiana, even voice signals could not be rerouted. The result: when citizens dialed 911, they got a busy signal.

Communications Failures PSTN/911 Data Information Sharing

User

Cause Infrastructure Failure Lack of Capacity Degradation of services. Inadequate planning in rerouting 911 data. Lack of bandwidth to collaborate between EOC and 1st responder effectively.

101

Chapter Page 18-6b

Incidents Meanwhile, the influx of thousands of first responders into the region greatly increased the workload for 911 call center operators who were themselves victims of the storm. Some left when their families evacuated. Those remaining operated under tremendous stress. A North Carolina 911 official helping the response effort in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, observed that no plan existed to bring additional, credentialed telecommuni cators into the region, and that early Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) requests for inter-state assistance did not include 911 operators.

Communications Failures PSTN/911 Data Information Sharing

User Responder

Cause Lack of Capacity Operational Guidance Need Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) requests for inter-state assistance did not include 911 operators.

102

Chapter Page 18-6c

Incidents The NCS had inadequate information about the communicatio n situation in the New Orleans area. According to NCS protocol, its headquarter s receives such information only when its personnel on the ground have run into “problems [they] can’t fix.” The magnitude of the damage in Louisiana proved this system to be inadequate. NCS staff was “so busy handling the crisis that they were probably not giving us the situational awareness that we should have been getting….We just didn’t have enough people down there. Additional staff were sent to the region and placed a contact at the Louisiana state EOC. There were several communicatio ns assets were not deployed at all, or could have been.

Communications Failures Voice/Data/Broadcast Information Sharing

User Government Responder

Cause Infrastructure Failure Operational Guidance Poor daily update procedures. Lack of situational awareness

103

Chapter Page 18-7a

Incidents The U.S. Forest Service maintains over 5,000 radios, the largest civilian cache of radios in the United States, but many remained unused. •FEMA Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS) units, which include trucks with satellite capabilities, were at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana outside the disaster area during landfall, and did not travel to the State EOC in Baton Rouge until the day after landfall. •DOD had communicati ons assets, including radio systems, which could have been deployed sooner. •DHS Prepositioned Equipment Program (PEP) pods that contained communicati ons equipment did not start deploying until a week after landfall.

Communications Failures Voice/Data/Broadcast Information Sharing

User Government Responder

Cause Operational Guidance Equipment did not start deploying until a week after landfall.

104

Chapter Page 18-7b

Incidents But most of these NCS assets were not provided until days after the storm struck or were only provided to select locations. Indeed, satellite vans were not en route to the Louisiana State Police in Baton Rouge until September 1, and high water kept one satellite van from reaching New Orleans City Hall until three days after landfall.

Communications Failures Radio/Cellular/Satellite Voice/Data

User Government Responder

Cause Operational Guidance Equipment did not start deploying until a week after landfall.

105

Chapter Page 18-7c

Incidents

Communications Failures

It appears that some requests for the NCS to provide communicati ons capabilities to local government s were not made until a few days after landfall. For example, Louisiana’s Acting Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness , did not submit a form requesting “communica tions with the affected parish EOCs” until 5 p.m. on September 1 – more than three days after landfall. In fact, he said he wasn’t aware that the State EOC had communicati ons problems until the state made its request on September 1.

PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data/Broadcast Information Sharing

User

Cause Operational Guidance It appears that some requests for the NCS to provide communicati ons capabilities to local governments were not made until a few days after landfall.

106

Chapter Page

Incidents

Communications Failures

18-8a

Despite the level of MERS equipment deployed to the Gulf Coast, MERS was overwhelmed by the extent of communicatio ns needs and experienced difficulties in supporting FEMA personnel.

PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data/Broadcast

Government Responder

Operational Guidance Lack of Capacity Congestion

18-9a

No MERS vehicles ever reached the Superdome because of flooding, and this exacerbated the problems there

PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data/Broadcast

Government .

Operational Guidance

User

Cause

107

Chapter Page 18-9b

Incidents Satellite phones don’t rely on the terrestrial (groundbased) infrastructur e that is necessary for land mobile radio, land-line, and cellular communicati ons. But there is anecdotal evidence that satellite communicati ons experienced their own problems: New Orleans Mayor said that he had “a huge box of satellite phones that did not work.” In Mississippi, a FEMA employee said that satellite phone connections were “sporadic.”

Communications Failures Satellite Voice/Data

User General Public Responder Government

Cause Interoperability Training

108

Chapter Page

Incidents

Communications Failures

User

Cause

18-9c

The problems with satellite phones do not appear to have been caused by the phones themselves or the satellite networks; rather, a combination of user error and buildings or other objects obstructing satellite signals are the more likely culprits.In fact, NCS was not aware of any problems with the satellite phone networks.

Satellite Voice

Government

Training Operational Guidance

18-10a

Like most states, the parishes in the New Orleans area and state agencies maintain different communicatio n systems, which make it difficult for public safety agencies to communicate during everyday emergencies, let alone disasters on the scale of Katrina.

Radio Voice

Responder Government

Interoperability Lack of backwards compatibility and interfacing with newer systems. No Legacy support

109

Chapter Page 18-10b

Incidents

Communications Failures

The State of Louisiana operates on a statewide analog wireless system installed in 1996. It supports voice communicatio n only. This system is presently used by approximatel y 70 agencies with 10,000 subscribers. This system consists of 46 tower sites and 28 dispatch consoles. The Louisiana State Police operate an aging data network that cannot support additional users. The Louisiana Totally Interoperabl e Environment al (LATIE) Strategic Plan says that while “This system was quite sophisticated for its time, advances in technology have rendered it virtually obsolete.”

PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data

User Responder Government

Cause Interoperability Lack of backwards compatibility and interfacing with newer systems. No Legacy support and congested and limited transmission system.

110

Chapter Page 18-10c

Incidents Much of the communicati ons in southeastern Louisiana is outdated and has been at various stages of disrepair for several years. In Orleans Parish the communicatio ns system is an 800 MHz system, which supports police, fire, EMS and the Office of Emergency Preparedness .(MHz (Megahertz) denotes the frequency on which the equipment operates and public safety radio equipment often can only operate on a specific frequency.)T he age of the equipment created problems in getting technical support.

Communications Failures PSTN/Cellular/Radio/ Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data

User Responder Government

Cause Interoperability Lack of backwards compatibility and interfacing with newer systems

111

Chapter Page

Incidents

Communications Failures

User

Cause

18-11a

ACU-1000 units also provided limited interoperabil ity. The ACU1000, which is manufactured by JPS Raytheon, acts as a converter between radios from each system. But it can support only a limited number of channels for communicatio ns, and it requires a person to manually configure the connections with the radios.

Radio Voice

Responder

Lack of Capacity Congestion Created due to limitations of technology available

18-12a

Well before Katrina struck, Louisiana agencies encountered funding problems as they sought to enhance communicatio ns interoperabilit y

PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data

Responder

Interoperability Lack of prior funding and planning

Table AA 18.1 Communications Incident Analysis Table

112

Legend: The following is an explanation of the types of failures and users in the previous table: Communications Failures:PSTN/Cellular/Radio/Satellite/Internet/911 Voice/Data/Broadcast /Information Sharing, Users: General Public /Government/Responder The information provided in the previous table allowed aggregation of causes into particular “Types” of gaps. These “Gaps” of failure provide an insight into the particular factors that could be addressed to improve performance in future emergencies.

Table AA 18.2 Communications and Networking Gaps Matrix

113

N o .

Gap

Recommendations

Notes

Operational Guidance

Create governance structure that includes national, military, state, and local authorities, first responders, Air traffic control, and search and rescue personnel

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-4c, 185a, 21-16a

Operational Guidance

Develop interagency communications plan that includes national, military, state, local, search and rescue, and Air traffic control. Includes terrestrial, airborne, and maritime users. Train and operate to this plan

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents:21-16a, 217a, 21-7e

Infrastructu re Failure

Develop fly-away communications kits to include local LOS, mid-range, terrestrial, and long range over the horizon capability. Preplace in high incident areas plus stockpile reserve

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-1a, 181b, 18-2b, 18-4d, 18-5b, 1811a, 21-6a, 21-7d, 21-8b Includes emergency Cellular communications kits Includes power sources OTH can be satellite, GSM, airborne asset, or tropospheric Fly away kits are modular so only those capabilities needed can be deployed

Training

Provide training for communications system users

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-9b, 189c

Interoperab ility

Incorporate interoperability gateways as needed to enhance interoperability with existing communications systems

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-2c, 182d, 18-10a, 18-10b, 21-8b, 218c, 21-8d Airborne communications node could serve as a gateway

Interoperab ility

Use High Altitude Platform (UAV, airplane, balloon) as an airborne router to tie together separated land-based wireless groups

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-2a, 216a, 21-8b, 21-8c, 21-8d Creates wireless IP backbone

Infrastructu re Failure Lack of capacity 7

Operational Guidance

Develop online inventory of all emergency communications assets and their locations, accessible to emergency responders. Includes national, military, state, and local deployed assets, and stockpiled and reserve assets. Includes terrestrial, airborne, and maritime assets. Train and operate to this plan

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-4d, 186c, 18-7a, 18-7b, 18-7c, 21-7a Includes assets by community and organization Includes fly-away kits Linked to National Guard asset inventory

Infrastructu re Failure

Establish regional alliances where communities agree to share assets and provide aid during emergencies

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-7a, 187b Examples are Louisville â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cincinnati-Indianapolis and Harrisburg-Baltimore-

Lack of capacity

114

N o .

Gap

Recommendations

Notes

Richmond and MD â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Washed - VA 9

Access

Develop national ID system for emergency responders

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-4c

1 0

Interoperab ility

Develop interoperable communications standards to be utilized by federal, state, and local emergency responders

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-2c, 182d, 18-10a, 18-10b, 21-8b, 218d

1 1

Operational Guidance

Develop Frequency Management Plan: Temporarily allocate additional mutual aid channels. Temporarily allocate a portion of HDTV frequencies for emergency response

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-5a, 185b, 18-8a, 21-7b, 21-7c

1 2

Infrastructu re Failure

Use battery backed communications equipment

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-4b

1 3

Lack of capacity

Utilize radio systems with in-building capabilities

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-2d

1 4

Infrastructu re Failure

Provide wireless capable laptops with satellite GSM card to emergency responders

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-9b

Lack of capacity 1 5

Operational Guidance

Health care organizations develop a disaster recovery plan for their electronic patient records. Train and operate to this plan

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-2e

1 6

Interoperab ility

Develop integrated emergency communications system interoperability and migration plan at the national, state, and local levels. Build new/ upgrade existing communications capabilities to these plans

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-1a, 181b, 18-5c, 18-6a, 18-6b

1 7

Lack of capacity

Allocate funding to update emergency communications systems to agreed to standards and implementation / migration plan (inch broadband capabilities)

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-5a, 185b, 18-8a, 18-10c, 18-12a, 217b, 21-7c

1 8

Lack of capacity

Develop national inter-state network (highway) system that can be used for emergency response

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-1a, 181b, 18-5b May not be applicable for first 72 hours (Phase 1) Ties together all emergency response agencies in tiered network structure High speed networks connect responders to local, state, and national emergency electronic routing directory, data sharing systems, incident response and other emergency information

1 9

Infrastructu re Failure

Provide redundant / backup communications

Responds to Katrina Senate Report incidents: 18-1b, 18-

115

N o .

Gap

Recommendations

Notes

2b, 18-3a, 18-4a, 18-4d

Table AA 18.3Recommendations to Close Communications Gaps

116

Chart AA 19.0

117

The following table is extracted from chapter 19 on Lack of Situational awareness from the report of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs by U.S Senate. Just like the previous table this table identifies the primary causes that contributed to lack of situational awareness in different levels of Federal Government and Louisiana State Government during the response effort after hurricane Katrina.

ChPa ge

Summary

191

On the day of landfall, DHS failed to obtain readily reports that would have led to an understa nding of the situation

191

FEMA Director failed to provide, crucial info

191

HSOC failed to obtain reports from other reliable sources

191

HSOC failed to provide any detail in SITREP on Aug 29th, 5 p.m.

118

ChPa ge

Summary

192

Lack of planning made HSOC to fail recogniz ing many reports that they did receive

192

Due to structur al flaws HSOC obtained info with delay

193

HSOC Failed to receive, analyze and obtain info

195

HSOC failed to obtain news reports from the local sources

196

The attitude of the HSOC and DHS leadersh ip toward media reports was, at best, contradi ctory.

119

ChPa ge

Summary

198

Nearly all DHS witnesse s testified that they didn’t know about the levees situation until Tuesday morning

199

DHS and HSOC did not forward media based reports

199

HSOC exclusiv ely depende d on FEMA reports rather than other reliable and credible sources that were sending reports

199

FEMA failed to forward critical informat ion to DHS and HSOC

120

ChPa ge

Summary

1911

State level info gatherin g did not prevent serious breakdo wn in the state situation al awarene ss

1911

Logistic manager s express ed frustrati on at not knowing when commod ities were shipped or when they arrived.

1912

LOHSEP was simply not equippe d for the volume of informat ion it needed to assess

121

ChPa ge

1912

Summary

The state also lacked systems to organize incomin g informat ion in a manner that was useful for emergen cy respons e

Table AA 19.1 Lack of Situational Awareness – Katrina Report – Chapter 19

122

The following graphic represents essential functions or operations that are necessary to creating situational awareness that provides all responders with a Common Operational Picture (COP) as the response to the disaster event evolved and correlates the incident failure ID with each gap category. Though the incident failures were somewhat evenly spread across all gap categories, the inability to analyze multiple reports was a significant gap that prevented coordinators and decision makers from making the most effective decisions. The other gaps were somewhat evenly distributed across the event indicating that a single simple solution would not be able to mitigate these gaps to create an accurate and timely COP. These gaps range from not creating information, not sharing information, not acquiring or gaining access to shared information, and finally the failure to be able to understand shared information. From a Network Centric Operations perspective these gaps map to many known Net Centric Data tenets and concepts, where at a minimum, information must be made visible to the network community, it must be accessible, it must be understandable, it must be relevant to the role and mission of the human agents, and it must be manageable. AA 19.2Situational Awareness Analysis Summary

Figure 3.1.3 Situational Awareness, Information Sharing and Understanding Dependency

123

Chart AA 21 Search and Rescue

124

The data populating the above chart are based on the following table which itself is based on analysis of the findings in Chapter 21 of the Senate Katrina study of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs by U.S Senate. This table identifies the primary causes that contributed to creations of gaps in search and rescue effort during the recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina.

2 1 2

The NOFD owned no boats and NOPD owned only five

R e s p o n d e r s

No t Pr ovi sio ne d

2 1 2

DHS denied NOFD funding application for water USAR training in 2005

G o v t.

No t Pr ovi sio ne d /M an ag em ent

2 1 4

NOFD Emergency Operation Plan required NOFD officers to preposition their personal boats due to inadequate number of boats

R e s p o n d e r s

No t Pr ovi sio ne d

2 1 5

LA NG assets got flooded due to placement at one of lowest point in the city

R e s p o n

Ma na ge me nt

125

d e r s 5

2 1 5

FEMA pre-staged only 3 SAR teams in LA and 2 in MS

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

2 1 5

FEMA did not activate additional SAR teams until Aug 30th

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

2 1 5

FEMA SAR teams did not arrive in NO until late Monday night

R e s p o n d e r s

Ma na ge me nt

2 1 6

FEMA SAR teams did not have any water rescue capability (equipment & training)

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

2 1 6

Fire and police communication suffered from inoperability an lack of interoperability

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e/ Int ero per abi lity

V o i c e / D a t a

P S T N / C e l l /

126

a d i o 1 0

2 1 6

Storm damage forced NOFD and NOPD to switch to their contingency plan, mutual aid channel which slowed down the communication radically

V o i c e

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e/ Co ng est ion /Int ero per abi lity

1 1

2 1 6

NOFD could not transmit to certain parts of the city due to limited range

V o i c e

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e

1 2

2 1 7

W&F boats had trouble communicating with NG and CG helicopters

V o i c e

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e /Int ero per abi lity

1 3

2 1 7

VHF frequencies were cluttered and overloaded by communication between CG and other entities

V o i c e

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e

Co ng est ion

127

r s 1 4

2 1 7

CG pilots estimated that only 40% of their communication attempts with bases were successful

V o i c e

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e/ Co ng est ion

1 5

2 1 7

Some CG personnel were able to use personal cell phones for communication but cell infrastructure began to fail

V o i c e

C e l l

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e

1 6

2 1 7

CG did not anticipate breakdown in comm. infrastructures

a l l

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e/P ow er/ Co ng est ion /Int ero per abi lity

1 7

2 1 8

Nearly every SAR agency lacked basic maps of the area

R e s p o n d e

Ma na ge me nt

A R

128

r s 1 8

2 1 8

Agencies searched areas without knowing whether those areas have already been searched.

1 9

2 1 8

Boats were unable to coordinate with NG or CG to request airlift for victims

2 0

2 1 8

Lack of coordination prevented critical needs from reaching to victims at rescue collection sites

S R / A R / C O P

S R / C O P

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

R a d i o

R e s p o n d e r s

P S T N /

R e s p o n d e r s

Ma na ge me nt

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

R a d i o /

C e l l 2 1

2 1 8

Lack of coordination resulted from a lack of planning, direction and

S R / C O

129

leadership

2 2

2 1 8

Under NRP fed. And state Govt. were supposed to establish unified command for SAR, but both levels failed

S R / C O P

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

2 3

2 1 9

No plan for ground transportation to evacuate people from USAR collection points

S R / C R / C O P

R e s p o n d e r s

Ma na ge me nt

2 4

2 1 9

FEMA denied W&F request for large rubber boats

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt/ No t Pr ovi sio ne d

2 4

2 1 1 0

DHS was slow to deploy equipment pods to sustain or replenish up to 150 first responders

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

2 6

2 1 1 0

DOI offered 2 teams of law enforcement officers to FEMA, but FEMA's authorities in LA were un aware of

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

S R / C R

130

the offer 2 7

2 1 1 1

W&F had bureaucratic difficulties in making EMAC requests

2 8

2 1 1 1

2 9

U R

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

Many volunteers were turned away due to not having equipments and supply

G e n P u b li c

No t Pr ovi sio ne d

2 1 1 1

FEEMA and NOFD SAR teams pulled back on Thursday due to security concerns

R e s p o n d e r s

Se cur ity

3 0

2 1 1 2

Some residents refused to leave their homes despite the devastation

G e n P u b li c

Se cur ity

3 1

2 1 1 4

Despite the increased number of military helicopters by the end of the first week, the number of helicopters was still in adequate for the number of

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

131

victims.

3 2

2 1 1 5

Additional NG helicopters did not arrive until five days after the landfall.

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

3 3

2 1 1 6

the lack of an interagency plan to address search strategy, planning, and organization, communications, a centralized command structure, air traffic control, and reception of victims led to hazardous flight conditions, inefficient employment of resources, and protracted waits by victims in need of rescue.

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

3 4

2 1 1 6

No common strategy to a thorough and expeditious search existed, and no unified air traffic control system ensured safety of flight.

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

3 5

2 1 1 7

In a catastrophic disaster, then, there is currently no mechanism for planning SAR operations over extensive areas in

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

132

both maritime and overland environments 3 6

2 1 1 7

ESF-9 under the NRP covers USAR, but it does not address such massive efforts as Katrina, involving the combination of air, surface, and ground efforts

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

3 7

2 1 1 7

The lack of an adequate plan for large-scale SAR led to two major shortcomings in DOD’s air search and rescue (SAR) missions: inadequate air traffic control and poor coordination of deployed aircraft.

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

3 8

2 1 1 8

storm had incapacitated military and civilian air traffic control radar systems throughout the Gulf Coast, much of the airspace was uncontrolled

R e s p o n d e r s

Fai lur e

3 9

2 1 1 8

Lack of centralized command to assign search sectors, communicate with all assets, or direct aircraft to

G o v t.

Ma na ge me nt

S R / C O P

133

respond to distress calls led to poor coordination. 4 0

2 1 1 8

Airborne aircraft from all services and the local authorities communicated with each others and took tasking via radio calls from one another,” rather than from their operating bases. This ad hoc tasking system led to a lack of an overall strategy, in which victims were often deposited at intermediary locations, requiring further transport

S R / C O P

R e s p o n d e r s

Ma na ge me nt

Table AA 21.1 Search and Rescue Gap Analysis – Chapter 21

134

Acronyms: CG: Cost Guards Description: ESF: Emergency Support System LA: Louisiana MS: Mississippi NG: National Guards NO: New Orleans NRP: National Response Plan SAR: Search and Rescue USAR: Urban Search and Rescue W&F: Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

Situational Awareness: SR: Failure to Share Reports (Information) AR: Failure to Acquire Reports (Information) CR: Failure to Create Reports (Information) CMR: Conflicting Multiple Reports (Information) AMR: Failure to Analyze Multiple Reports (Information) COP: Failure to Create Common Operating Picture

135

AA 21.2 Search and Rescue Gap Analysis Summary The following graphic provides a summary analysis of the search and rescue failure incidents for each of the main gap categories, coordination planning, situational awareness, logistics, communications and network infrastructure.

Figure AA 21.2 Search and Rescue Gap Analysis Summary

136

Chart AA 23 - Logistics

The data populating the above chart is based on the following table which itself is based on analysis of the findings in Chapter 23 of the Senate Katrina study of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs by U.S Senate. This table identifies the primary causes that contributed to creations of gaps in logistics during the recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina.

137

( 1 )

2 3 1

State and local officials could not assess or communicate their needs to FEMA

S R

( 2 )

2 3 1

FEMA already knew it lacked personnel and systems necessary to respond to a large disaster

G Management o v t.

( 3 )

2 3 1

Warehouse space requirements in some areas have grown as much as 10 times and the transportation mission had grown over 300 percent in three years, while staff support for these functions had been unchanged for seven years.

G Management o v t.

( 4 )

2 3 2

FEMA’s poor planning for transportation was a key factor in the problems with commodities.

G Management o v t.

D a t a

G Management o v t.

138

( 5 )

2 3 2

Staffing shortages hindered FEMA’s logistics response to Katrina.

G Management o v t.

( 6 )

2 3 2

Unlike many large private shippers, FEMA could not track assets en route to destinations,

A R

G Management o v t.

( 7 )

2 3 2

FEMA’s decision to wait to determine whether prepositioned assets were sufficient instead of maintaining a constant stream of supplies compounded the problem

A R

G Management o v t.

( 8 )

2 3 3

While FEMA knew there was not enough supply of MRE, water and ice pre-position, yet it did not get additional commodities

S R

G o v t.

Management

( 9 )

2 3 3

A week after landfall food deliveries were totally unacceptable in MS and LA

C O P

G o v t.

Management

139

( 1 0 )

2 3 4

Local emergency managers had difficulty articulating an accurate level of demand for commodities given the catastrophic conditions and lack of communications

( 1 1 )

2 3 5

( 1 2 )

( 1 3 )

S R / A R / C R

D a t a

A l l

G o v t.

Management

Lack of communication and security played a major role in FEMA’s logistics struggle.

A l l

G o v t.

All

2 3 5

The number of incoming requests overwhelmed LA E-Team server

D a t a

I n t e r n e t

2 3 5

Parishes that lacked internet access transmitted their requests by other fragile and damaged communication sources

D a t a

I n t e r n e t

G o v t.

Failure/ Not Provisioned

140

( 1 4 )

2 3 5

In LA, officials lacked understanding of what assistance FEMA could appropriately provide. That lack of understanding led to the submission of requests that wasted FEMA’s time and resources

( 1 5 )

2 3 6

The systems that FEMA and the states used to process requests for aid were incompatible, delaying fulfillment

2 3 6

FEMA has 72 hours to establish a (JFO) however, the JFO in LA did not become fully operational for 12 days after landfall

( 1 6 )

D a t a

I n t e r n e t

G o v t.

Management

G o v t.

Interoperability

G o v t.

Management

141

( 1 7 )

2 3 6

Once FEMA submitted requests for assistance to the agencies expected to complete them, it had no efficient way to track progress by those agencies

A R / C O P

G o v t.

Management

( 1 8 )

2 3 6

The inability to track left some orders “unfilled, duplicated, unchecked, or misdirected

A R / C O P

G o v t.

Management

( 1 9 )

2 3 7

LNHA submitted E-Team request at the beginning of the crisis but LOHSEP revoked its privilege because LNHA was not a Govt. agency

C O P

G o v t.

Management

( 2 0 )

2 3 8

LOHSEP failed to coordinate and establish supply lines to the ad-hoc, unplanned distribution points

C O P

G o v t.

Management

142

( 2 1 )

2 3 8

LOHSEP & NG experienced difficulties in coordinating the delivery of commodities and the equipment needed by parishes

( 2 2 )

2 3 9

If FEMA and the state had executed more contracts with vendors before the storm for critical supplies, that would have saved time during the poststorm crisis

( 2 3 )

2 3 9

Key commodities were not sent until two days after landfall from Zephyr Field

( 2 4 )

2 3 9

High-water vehicles were needed to deliver commodities to flooded areas (like the Superdome)

( 2 5 )

2 3 9

planners failed to ensure that all supply PODs in affected areas would be set up on high ground

C O P

G o v t.

Management

G o v t.

Management

C O P

G o v t.

Management

C O P

G o v t.

Management

G o v t.

Management

143

( 2 6 )

2 3 9

Neither FEMA nor the state had planned or prepared for a coordinated system of commodities distribution to the search and rescue base of operations, where the situation became critical as transportation to evacuate the rescued was delayed

( 2 7 )

2 3 9

Masses of people gathered at the Superdome, Convention Center, and various search– and-rescue drop points around town without basic sanitation

C O P

G o v t.

Management

G Not o Provisioned v Management t.

144

( 2 8 )

2 3 9

On Tuesday NOPD & NG requested portable toilets for the Superdome and a FEMA representative promised to have them delivered by Wednesday however according to one vender he was turned around twice at security checkpoints. Eventually toilets were delivered on Saturday

( 2 9 )

2 3 1 0

While FEMA and the National Guard were able to come through with additional MREs and water before landfall, officials were able to locate enough food for Sunday and Monday only

C O P

G o v t.

Management

G o v t.

Management

145

( 3 0 )

2 3 1 0

After the storm abated on Monday, officials at the Superdome could receive commodities at nearby highway overpasses, where they would be loaded onto high-water vehicles for delivery to the Superdome. It remains unclear which entity carries responsibility for the failure to deliver the commodities to the Superdome

C O P

G o v t.

Management

( 3 1 )

2 3 1 0

Opening of the Convention Center as a refuge two days after landfall was largely unplanned. As a result, over the weekend, no food or water was prepositioned there, and no commodities arrived there for three days.

S R / A R /

G o v t.

Management

C O P

146

( 3 2 )

2 3 1 1

At the end result of Mayor Nagin and Col. Ebbert’s lack of planning, preparation, action, and coordination, combined with security concerns and DHS’s lack of situational awareness, was that food and water for the 19,000 people at the Convention Center began to arrive on Thursday, but did not arrive in meaningful quantities until Friday

S R / A R / C R / U R / C M R / A M R / C O P

G o v t.

Management, Security

( 3 3 )

2 3 1 2

Robert Latham, Executive Director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), estimated that Mississippi had to make do with even less– 10 percent to 20 percent of requests during the critical days after landfall

C O P

G o v t.

Management,

147

( 3 4 )

2 3 1 2

FEMA failed to pre-position enough supplies in MS in fact Mississippi Emergency Management Agency was unable to discover how much supply had been prestaged

( 3 5 )

2 3 1 2

Both the federal and MS state governments supplied commodities due to FEMA’s failure in logistical system

( 3 6 )

2 3 1 2

According to FEMA’s Federal Coordinating Officer in MS, we seldom had visibility of critical resources because FEMA does not have a reliable system for tracking commodities, equipment, and personnel. As a result, local and state authorities were often “totally in the dark,” causing friction

S R / A R /

G o v t.

Management,

G o v t.

Management,

G o v t.

Management,

C O P

S R / A R / C R / C O P

148

( 3 7 )

2 3 1 4

There was no strategy for distributing the commodities from Stennis Space Center in MS

( 3 8 )

2 3 1 5

While state and local officials were able to make due with what fuel they had and with what was brought into the state through FEMA, the shortage came perilously close to causing a crisis. Given the importance of fuel to first responders and private citizens, as ell as its importance to infrastructure, emergency managers must place a higher priority on ensuring an adequate supply in the aftermath of a disaster

C O P

G o v t.

Management,

G o v t.

Management,

AA 23.2 Logistics Gap Analysis Summary

149

The following figure summarizes the logistics gaps by gap category.

Figure AA 23.2 Logistics Gap Analysis Summary

150

B: References and Attributions Communications [C-1] Kennedy, Harold, “Can You Hear Me?”, National Defense, July 2006. [C-2] Marsan, Carolyn Duffy, “Michigan County Upgrades First-responder Net”, Network World, Aug. 31 2006 [C-3] Marsan, Carolyn Duffy, “Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina”, Network World, Aug. 31 2006 [C-4] Strong Angel III Objectives, http://www.strongangel3.net/objective , 2006 [C-5] Steckler, Brian, “SAIII Network Communications Architecture Summary”, http://www.strongangel3.net/node/219, 2006. [C-6] Steckler, Brian, “WiMAX Reachback to Nearest Surviving fiber/copper Internet Point”, http://www.strongangel3.net/node/189, 2006. [C-7] Lipowicz, Alice, “Katrina Forces Rethinking”, Washington Technology, August 21, 2006. [C-8] Marsan, Carolyn Duffy, “D.C. deploys wireless net for first responders”, Network World, August 31, 2006. [C-9] Marsan, Carolyn Duffy, “9/11 disconnect: 5 years later, many first responders stuck with second-rate wireless gear”, Network World, August 31, 2006. [C-10] Global Information Grid Net-Centric Implementation Documents V2.0, DISA, 21 December 2005. [C-11]United States Senate, “Hurricane Katrina, Report of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs”,May 2006. [C-12] Steckler, Brian, “Joint Task Force Katrina Relief Effort”, Naval Postgraduate School, Presented at NCOIC Plenary, March 2006. [C-13] Cannon, Christopher, “Yale New Haven Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response” briefing, Presented at NCOIC Plenary, March 2006. [C-14] Epperly, LTC John M., “Transformation for Disaster Relief: Multiagency Response to Hurricane Katrina Relief” briefing, Presented at NCOIC Plenary, March 2006. [C-15} COMCARE website, http://www.comcare.org/ . [C-16] Emergency Interoperability Consortium website, http://www.eic.org/ [C-17] Halladay, Jessie, “3 cities agree to mutual-aid pact”, USA Today,October 10, 2006. [C-18] Fetterman, Mindy, “Strategizing on disaster relief”, USA Today,October 12, 2006.

151

C: Principal Authors and Their Organizations Authors: David Aylward, Director, COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance Jim Bound, Distinguished Engineering Fellow, Hewlett-Packard Bonnie Gorsic, Technical Fellow, NCO Architecture Engineering, Boeing Steve Gross, Deputy Director, Center for Network Innovation, Deloitte & Touche Walter LeGrand, Manager, Strategic and Institutional Marketing, EADS Paul Mangione, Member, Senior Technical Staff, NCOIC Harrison Miles, Technology Architect, Intel Nelson Santini, Director, Strategic Markets, DataPath Amin Soleimani, Systems Engineer, Rockwell-Collins John Yanosy, Chief Architect, Rockwell-Collins

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