Information is only as good as what someone does with it.

Technology is only as good as those who have it.

Two very difficult statements, that rings very true during a crisis. Can we solve the challenges it brings, yes.

Networking is not a just a term for technology, but it is the primary requirement in social interactions that solve many of today’s problems by creating teams, specialist and leaders to overcome the impossible.

There are 5 categories of assets a community can potentially take advantage of during a major crisis.

1) Local civic government, which includes the local police, fire, ambulance services and civil departments (PFAC).

2) National Government ministeries or State departments. These offices have resources that often augmented services and equipment. Often this is an auxillary catch all for important services that a local community may not have due to the cost of such assets and resources.

3) National Military. This asset is very often the most important one used when the crisis overwhelms a community and the local middle government institutions. The military trains for many different aspects of logistics, transport and services that often they are the last link that the country may have to support a large scale incident.

4) Foreign NGO. Many organizations throughout the world such as the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders are critical support assets as the local support teams exhaust supplies and people through attrition and simply working excessive hours. Without NGO’s from around the world, humanitarian suffering would increase dramatically.

5) Foreign Military. Like the indigenous military of the country in crisis, the training and assets this group can bring to bear are the ones that can save the day when getting basic communications, logistical communications and air/sea/land transport to a disaster scene. They have the advantage of not being in the original incident harms way and have rested crews and equipment often ready to be deployed if the government they represent gives the green light to assist.

With these capabilities for a community to have at its disposal the challenge becomes one of networking both from a social and technical point of view. The policies and procedures that have to be implemented for the 5 groups listed above need to be coordinated and mutually acceptable. A difficult task that with barriers.

These barriers are technical and social in nature. Strong Angel III will look at these issues and attempt to demonstrate what is possible with today’s technology and inter-operability lessons learned from past crisis.

If you have comments or suggestions, we would be glad to listen.

Doug Hanchard
Solution Architect
Technical Communications Advisor – SA III
Bell Canada