Improving Disaster Management The Role of IT in Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery (2007) / Chapter Skim
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3 Improving Acquisition and Adoption of IT for Disaster Management
3 Improving Acquisition and Adoption of IT for Disaster Management
Pages 68-107
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From page 68... ...
Some disaster management organizations have also been quite effective in integrating state-of-the-art IT technologies into their day-to-day operations (e.g., the use of Internet Protocol [IP] -based emergency management tools, the use of cell phones to listen in on first responder land mobile radio traffic, and the use of laptops and wireless local area networks)
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From page 69... ...
However, developing and manufacturing such sensors for the uncertain and highly cost-constrained disaster management market do not constitute attractive commercial opportunity at this time. • In most agencies with disaster management responsibilities, there is no one who is charged specifically with tracking IT technology, identifying promising technologies, integrating them into operations, or interacting with IT vendors to make sure that needs are addressed.
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From page 70... ...
One conclusion (overly pessimistic in the committee's view) given these barriers would be that advanced IT solutions are impractical for most local governments and emergency management agencies.
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From page 71... ...
From Waterfall Acquisition to Iterative Development Historically, as in many other areas, the introduction of technology in disaster management has been characterized by a series of major deployments, occurring at intervals sometimes measured in years or even decades. These long cycle times reflect in part the traditional "waterfall" acquisition process.
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From page 72... ...
An iterative process uses multiple, short acquisition cycles, which over time deliver and improve on system capabilities. Such a process encourages feedback from users and allows them to play a constructive and central role in a system's evolution.
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From page 73... ...
An iterative process allows time for users to build trust in the system's ability to deliver on those critical requirements and a mechanism for providing feedback to request (or demand) changes as needed.
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From page 74... ...
This long horizon requires using discounting of future benefits, as well as ongoing costs. Since the occurrence, magnitude, and timing of future disasters are uncertain, appropriate discount rates may have to be quite high, so that results adequately reflect the intuition of the participants and funders of disaster mitigation expenses.
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From page 75... ...
Technology Evaluation The decentralized nature of disaster management, spread across thousands of agencies -- from the smallest volunteer fire department, to sophisticated urban police departments, to state, regional, and federal agencies -- presents particular problems for effective technology evaluation and diffusion. Today, many managers responsible for the acquisition of technology for public safety and emergency management are, quite understandably, unable to keep-up-to date with the volume of technology and choices available.
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From page 76... ...
It is the Federally Funded Research 2Based on the testimony of Otto Doll, Bureau of Information Technology, state of South Dakota, and Dave Smith, Indiana Integrated Public Safety Commission, at the committee's June 2005 workshop.
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From page 77... ...
Processes That Bring Technology Developers and Practitioners Together An iterative development process goes hand in hand with an acquisition process which assumes that technologies and organizational processes will co-evolve. Coordinating technological advances and organizational process changes requires new knowledge and skills on the part of both practitioners and technology developers and new relationships between them.
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From page 78... ...
Federal grants could support creation of expertise within state and local agencies by, for instance, sending people from public safety agencies to regional centers for training and to interact with technology experts and other practitioners to stay abreast of the latest developments in both practice and technology.
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From page 79... ...
This is regrettable, since many technical innovations begin as non-commercial experiments, though only a relatively few survive the road to commercialization. Despite this resistance, there are some examples of how the open source software/ open standard development model has been applied to disaster management.
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From page 80... ...
• Use of selected non-commercial advisers as independent sources of information and reviewing IT and communication plans under the auspices of an advisory organization. Judged on the merits of their results, open source software/open standards developers could become valuable members of the disaster
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From page 81... ...
Open source software and open standards are not so much challenges to traditional commercial approaches as they are extensions and supplements that take advantage of voluntary collaboration and cooperation, especially in low-fre quency, high-risk, and high-uncertainty applications where commercial incentives alone may not yield needed results. management community.
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From page 82... ...
, and state and local organizations began to use CAP in a variety of emer gency alerting and notification applications.1 Ultimately, the international OASIS standards group partnered with U.S. and international disaster response programs to formalize CAP and an associated family of Emergency Data eXchange Lan guage (EDXL)
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From page 83... ...
It is often logistically difficult to arrange training for huge public safety organizations, with training sometimes spread over many months. The less relevant the lessons are to their daily tasks, the less likely practitioners are to retain lessons from the training.
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From page 84... ...
Non-governmental organizations of various kinds, government agencies not normally concerned with disasters or public safety, trained volunteers and emergent ones (especially within the victim population itself) -- all these are active participants in disaster management.
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From page 85... ...
Recent IT advances offer new ways for volunteers to contribute to disaster response and recovery efforts. For example, the following are just a few of the many volunteer activities in the response to Hurricane Katrina: • Web-based information aggregation systems at http://katrinalist.net and http://www.disastersearch.org.
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From page 86... ...
Public safety agencies maintain extensive infrastructure independent of the commercial infrastructure available to the general public. There are a number of important reasons for this.
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From page 87... ...
, • Cellular data networks for text messaging and e-mail services, • Satellite phone networks, • Ad hoc wireless networks, • Municipal wireless networks (some of these are dedicated networks for public safety personnel) , • Traffic management systems, • Aerial photo systems, • Radio over IP systems, • Cable/public television broadcasting systems, • Video monitoring and conferencing systems, • Paging systems, • Telephone bridges, • Internet services, including (but not limited to)
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From page 88... ...
Doing so successfully will require that those organizations take on more responsibility for the design of those systems. In the course of its work, the committee has identified four system design principles that have particular importance for disaster management systems: • Build emergency management systems for effective scaling from routine to disaster operation.
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From page 89... ...
Consider, for example, that first responder radios encapsulate multiple attributes -- pushto-talk, the form factor of the handset and microphone, and push-to-talk communications within defined groups -- that could be unbundled and repackaged for more effective use. Similarly, future handheld communications devices might employ cell phone technology (not commercial cell phones themselves)
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From page 90... ...
First, the interconnection of emergency management applications using shared data standards could permit activities such as situation reporting and resource management to be turned into continual "flow" processes rather than "batch" activities based on paper-based documentoriented systems. This conversion could reduce the time delays and the unintended synchronization of reports, requests, and orders inherent in fixed reporting cycles.
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From page 91... ...
It also allows for more phased relocation to emergency facilities, thus reducing the vulnerability of the emergency management system that can result when all participants are in transit at the same time. Finally, in addition to reducing the necessary size of physical emergency operation centers, greater virtualization might also permit a more gradual activation of emergency procedures, one that can be more closely matched to the particular "curve" of a particular disaster.
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From page 92... ...
Besides traditional voice calls, cell phones also increasingly support other communications capabilities -- for example, push-to-talk, text messaging, Web access, and instant messaging -- all of which may be useful and familiar. Wireless networking is also becoming ubiquitous in populated areas and is supported on multiple mobile de 8COWs have been deployed for wilderness firefighting, and Qualcomm deployed an improvised system that included movable switches (switches-on-wheels, or SOWs)
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From page 93... ...
These characteristics naturally lead to IT capabilities that are both redundant and diverse. Flexibility, Composability, and Interoperability as Core Guiding Principles Systems designed to exhibit the characteristics of flexibility, composability, and interoperability as core guiding principles can produce many long-term improvements with wide-ranging implications for the effectiveness of IT use for disaster management.
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From page 94... ...
These systems improve interoperability but generally do so by moving the stovepipes to a higher organizational level (e.g., multiple police departments are integrated into a state-wide police communication system, or municipal police and firefighting communication systems are integrated within a municipality or region) , but boundaries will remain (e.g., police and fire fighters cannot communicate, or public safety agencies across jurisdictions cannot communicate)
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From page 95... ...
First responder radios encapsulate multiple attributes -- push-to-talk capability, the form factor of the handset and microphone, and communications within defined groups -- that could be unbundled and repackaged for more effective use. Handheld communications devices might employ cell phone technology but with adaptations (in durability, form factor, or frequency)
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From page 96... ...
adopted by the public safety or disaster management communities that could benefit from it. Such technology does not require significant further adaptation, development, or research.
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From page 97... ...
Some hardware components -- such as personal computers and disk drives -- have become commodities. Commodity hardware benefits from significant economies of scale, so that the hardware cost of a cell phone is roughly one-tenth that of a police handheld radio.
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From page 98... ...
There remain some difficult issues in disaster management for which solutions are not at hand -- for example, reliable radio communications inside buildings or rubble. Research aimed specifically at improving disaster management could be conducted by university, commercial, and government laboratories, and even volunteer relief agencies such as the Red Cross.
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From page 99... ...
has been gaining prominence in almost every field of scientific endeavor, including disaster management research.1 Indeed, the report cites earlier NRC work that describes four factors promoting the growth of interdisciplinary research: (1) the complexity of nature and society, (2)
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From page 100... ...
Today, there is a much wider set of technology options available. There is also an increasing need for the diverse organizations with public safety and homeland security responsibilities to be able to cooperate during large-scale disasters.
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From page 101... ...
A roadmap can also make explicit investment choices concerning tradeoffs among competing priorities and between tensions such as security versus openness and other such tensions previously identified. Finally, a roadmapping process provides an opportunity to consider the interrelationships between technology and organizational models and technology and policy.
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From page 102... ...
The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative has developed a sensors technology roadmap that examines technology capabilities and applications in a variety of sectors, including transportation, health care, and consumer electronics.12 Perhaps the most familiar application of roadmapping is the semiconductor industry's roadmap. In the late 1980s, it became clear that the integrated circuit industry was not only a rapidly growing part of the global economy but also critically important to the economy and national security of the United States.
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From page 103... ...
Then, investment from all sectors can then be committed to track this vision as it evolves. A successful roadmapping process would ultimately result in full and active participation of the vendor community, just as the SIA roadmap process eventually included the entire worldwide semiconductor industry, including those who spurred its development as the perceived "adversaries."
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From page 104... ...
In some cases, large-scale testbeds are required to understand issues that only emerge at scale. Simulations present oppor 14This point was made repeatedly by workshop participants and is reflected in the committee's earlier workshop report; see National Research Council, Summary of a Workshop on Using Information Technology to Enhance Disaster Management, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2005, p.
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From page 105... ...
The centers would closely partner with federal, state, and local agencies responsible for disaster management. Indeed, experienced and capable emergency management officials and operational units from disaster management organizations should be deeply involved in the work of these centers.
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From page 106... ...
projects as successful examples of programs carrying out field research that involved the public safety community.15 The Strong Angel exercises mentioned in Chapter 2 are another example of how technologies still in the development stage can be tested in the field and can begin to gain acceptance in the practitioner community that is ultimately indispensable to adoption, as well as provide researchers with feedback on the proper direction for further research and development. Finally, as the use of advanced sensors, communication technology, and similar IT increases, it becomes ever easier to collect data about the 15See National Research Council, Summary of a Workshop on Using Information Technology to Enhance Disaster Management, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2005, p.
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From page 107... ...
Some well-known centers are the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder; the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, which investigates the social science aspects of disasters; the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University; and Dartmouth College's Institute for Security Technology Studies.16 Such centers could provide the basis for a network of research centers where IT researchers, hazard and disaster researchers, and disaster management practitioners can collaborate to study and evaluate the use of IT for disaster management from both a technological and an organizational perspective; transition knowledge and technology to those who practice disaster management; build human capital at the intersection of IT and disaster management; and develop future IT capabilities. 16Texas A&M University provides a Web site at http://archone.tamu.edu/hrrc/ related-sites/Centers.html#Domestic with links to domestic and international disaster research centers.
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