Summary of a Workshop on Using Information Technology to Enhance Disaster Management (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Summary of Remarks Made by Workshop Participants
Summary of Remarks Made by Workshop Participants
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Workshop participants invited as panelists included federal program managers and researchers, state and local officials and first responders, representatives from industry, and academic researchers from a variety of disciplines. In addition to providing perspectives on the current state of the art and practice, workshop presenters also described future opportunities to make better use of information technology to improve disaster management.2 This report provides the committee's summary of key points made by workshop participants.
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More than 90 percent of wireless public safety infrastructure is owned, operated, and maintained by localities. A speaker estimated that the total federal investment in interoperable communications represents something less than 3 percent of what the nation spends on public safety wireless communications.
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for representing, storing, and transferring information as critical to better use of IT in disaster management, noting that: · Standards ease interoperability and can foster increased information exchange and help lower costs. · Even good standards will have to be changed as circumstances evolve, which places a premium on processes and methods that tolerate extensibility and both incremental and rapid change.
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The public safety community is primarily dependent on local revenue, which must also cover such local needs as education and roads. · Life-cycle costs, including the ongoing expense of maintenance, training, and operations, should be factored in from the beginning and understood by all involved.
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· Visual data such as pictures, video, and maps are increasingly complementing and being integrated with voice and text data. · However, reliable voice communications are, and will continue to be, the unequivocal highest priority for the public safety community.
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Panelists cited the Disaster Management Interoperability Services program and the Biological Warning and Incidents Characterization project as examples of programs that have had success in carrying out field research that involved the public safety community. · Successful development is iterative.
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Several speakers focused on the topic of wireless and mobile communications.5 They identified some general issues as well as areas of promising research and challenges related to this technology. Panelists noted several attributes of both commercial and governmental wireless technologies that are important in disaster management: · In addition to being untethered, wireless communications are highly and dynamically reconfigurable without physical linking, which allows reprovisioning of communications infrastructure on the fly.
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· Wireless technologies can be used to provide location information independent of the Global Positioning System. Better techniques of that kind are needed for applications indoors, in dense urban environments, and so forth.
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Data fusion has to advance to the point that multiple data streams of heterogeneous and often confusing data can be converted into actionable information. · Detection of change is an area potentially ripe for research.
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An example that also illustrates the importance of sensitivity to context was provided by a panelist who noted that in a recent training exercise, Marines who were using personal digital assistants to work with map data rather than focusing on immediate dangers were the first ones to be "shot." Several panelists focused on sensors, sensor networks, and autonomous devices: · Unmanned aerial vehicles, especially when combined with improved network communications, have tremendous promise because they can carry weather and other types of cameras and sensors to places that human responders cannot reach safely or at all. · The distance between a remote device and the human interpreting the device's information output to make decisions introduces major complications, with respect to both human processing and communications infrastructure.
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Finally, several speakers focused on opportunities and challenges for building future interoperable networks. Their comments included these: · Adaptive technologies, such as cognitive radios, that sense their environment and modify their frequency, waveform, and even their power consumption to fit the situation will continue to evolve and play a growing role in public safety communications.
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· A culture of information technology tool sharing, which will help make use of future networks more effective, is beginning to take root in the disaster management community but needs further nurturing. Public-private partnerships are an important part of this effort, as are laboratories and test beds where vendors, researchers, and public safety and emergency management organizations can work to integrate their products and services.
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