When disaster strikes, it is absolutely imperative for emergency resources to be deployed efficiently and for life-critical supplies to reach first responders in a timely fashion. When a delay of even seconds can lead to loss of life, authorities need to know where the nearest ambulances, firefighters and helicopters are, the locations of the wounded, how quickly emergency personnel can reach the scene and the supplies they need to cope with the situation.

When disaster strikes, it is absolutely imperative for emergency resources to be deployed efficiently and for life-critical supplies to reach first responders in a timely fashion. When a delay of even seconds can lead to loss of life, authorities need to know where the nearest ambulances, firefighters and helicopters are, the locations of the wounded, how quickly emergency personnel can reach the scene and the supplies they need to cope with the situation.

Putting together a truly effective disaster relief effort requires authorities to work as a single team with real time situational awareness of assets and personnel, allowing the right people to make faster and better decisions at the right time.

“Disasters require a great deal of ready resources that can be quickly deployed,” reported Charles Hagan, section chief of state logistics for the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) in Tallahassee, Fla. “Total asset visibility (TAV) is an overarching requirement for any response or recovery agency. It’s having situational awareness of your assets, teams, equipment, personnel and facilities.”

TAV allows decisions and deployments to be made in near real time as they’re needed, Hagan told HSToday. While the military has used the concept for decades in one form or another, TAV is relatively new in the civilian world. The reason? “Much of it comes down to funding, which is much smaller for non-military levels of government, as well as an overall lack of personnel to implement such systems,” he stated.

New tool

So how do emergency management personnel track rescue helicopters, ambulances or food, water, medicine, generators and other equipment?

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Atlanta, Ga., are developing a collaborative mapping tool to help officials identify, activate, track and coordinate response assets in real time. Initially developed as a battlefield visualization system for the military, the Geographic Tool for Visualization and Collaboration (GTVC) has been modified to suit the needs of first responders and incident planners.

Combining a mapping engine with an interface for adding symbols, graphics and text, the GTVC gives emergency planners an immediate live view of available resources and assets in real time. During a disaster, electronic feeds alert users to events and display their locations live on the map. Deployed resources are instantly tracked with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) feeds, and the system also highlights the locations and status of hospitals, schools, nursing homes, fire stations and more in the affected area. (For example, the exact number of available beds at a particular hospital.)

The most current location of emergency resources are shown in real time on the map, which allows authorities to observe the movement of relief supplies and whether resources arrive on time or are delayed due to breakdowns or diversions. The system can be used simultaneously by a large number of users, utilizes the Department of Homeland Security’s official emergency management symbols, with every object on the map linking to the appropriate database. Since it can also track smoke or chemical plumes, responders can use the tool to help plan safe evacuation routes.

The system allows authorities to create an unlimited number of data layers to represent either different types of incidents or the groups, organizations and agencies responsible for managing various types of resources or actions. Every user’s actions are recorded and time-stamped, giving command personnel the option to review them after the event in order to improve incident planning. Since a huge network of emergency assets are deployed during emergencies such as a hurricane (for example, trucks, helicopters, aircraft, first responders), the GTVC can be used for pre-planning actions, training and practice exercises and real time actual incident response.

“A typical scenario could be that a hurricane is approaching an area,” explained Kirk Pennywitt, a senior research engineer in GTRI’s Information Technology and Telecommunications Laboratory. “A session is created for that situation. Low-lying areas that might be inundated with water can be outlined and saved as a layer and identified for the first evacuation notices. Emergency shelters and first responder staging areas can be pre-identified and saved as another layer. Evacuation routes can be planned and saved as yet another layer.

“If the hurricane actually hits the area, the real time actions of setting up roadblocks, establishing active evacuation routes and sending continuous communications to responders can then be applied. After the hurricane has passed, the status of shelters with respect to current capacity can be continually updated, routes for relief supplies shown and messages indicating recovery actions communicated. If supply and relief vehicles are equipped with GPS transponders, their current locations and status can be displayed in real time. When the crisis is over and the incident closed, the complete session actions from beginning to end can be stored and reviewed for after-action reporting and analysis.”

The real advantage of this system, Pennywitt stated, is that the tool has been designed from the ground-up for ease of use so that responders can operate the system effectively with just a few hours of training, compared to geographical information systems that require months to learn and operate. Pennywitt is currently working on adding an option that will allow users to provide their own custom topographic, photographic or aerial maps.

In use

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency has been using the system since 2005 to track forest fires and hurricanes. Hillsborough County, Fla., and Dakota County, Minn., have also licensed the software for their incident preparedness plans. The GTVC was selected by FDEM in June 2007 as part a comprehensive technology toolset for a statewide disaster response solution. Florida plans to implement a robust networked emergency management system that includes the software in all 67 of the state’s counties.

Other tools being utilized by FDEM include the OrbitOne, a robust satellite-based tracking device that can be used to track the movement of assets such as food, ice, generators and medicine. The state of Florida evaluated OrbitOne transponders on 14 hurricanes over 13 months during the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, and many of the 27,800 “loads” moved during the 2004 hurricane season were tracked with this system.

“TAV for disasters holds more to a military operation than a Wal-Mart type response system since we must surge massive amounts of resources in very short periods of time versus a system that supports multiple sites on a regular day-to-day basis,” said Hagan. “It can be accomplished through multiple technologies to include GTVC and OrbitOne. We’ve tagged all our state agency vehicles and track them daily. We’re considering adding OrbitOne transponders to all designated tactical teams in the state so that they can be tracked while continuing to use the transponders on all our contracted resources, such as tractor-trailers of water, ice, food and other commodities, and heavy equipment, such a generators, pumps, cranes, material handling equipment and other heavy equipment and transportation assets. All this feeds to our Movement Coordination Center, which is responsible for the tracking of all surface, air, sealift and rail assets. This gives us true Total Asset Visibility.”