Funding & Research: Homeland Defense

Homeland Defense Page

Deccan International’s applications address some of the most critical objectives advanced by the Department of Homeland Security..

Incorporate interstate and intrastate mutual aid agreements

Deccan’s software suite can be used to rapidly identify, prepare for, and coordinate the regional deployment of public safety resources and mutual aid units. These incident management tools serve as critical components in mitigating successfully a large-scale threat.

ADAM addresses mutual aid planning-related tasks by:

1. Providing departments with the ability to conduct simulated performance analyses, incorporating both local units and region-wide mutual aid. 
2. Allowing users to evaluate the effectiveness of current and/or proposed mutual aid stations, thereby facilitating decision-making in drafting and concluding future mutual aid agreements.

LiveMUM addresses daily/ongoing tasks by:

1. Presenting complex CAD data in easy to understand, map-based visual representations. 
2. Revealing real-time holes in coverage to dispatchers, indicating the need for reallocations and/or the need for mutual aid.
3. Providing first responder reallocation recommendations based on evaluation of factual CAD data— these recommendations are inherently more reliable than error-prone human calculations made “on-the-fly” and which do not incorporate all factors accurately.

BARB simplifies the difficulty of drafting mutual aid agreements by:

1. Allowing departments to incorporate any number of mutual aid stations in a CAD during disasters.
2. Providing virtually immediate implementation of fine-tuning, major changes, and/or minor alterations, thus allowing rapid reconfiguration of mutual aid agreements with drastically reduced expenditure.
3. Saving time, resources, and assets that could be better utilized elsewhere.
    

Facilitate communication and interoperability protocols

To enable interoperability, all neighboring jurisdictions must possess common semantics for the various response units.

Deccan’s ADAM and BARB can greatly assist a regional task force, addressing these needs by:

1. Enabling a task force to model all regional units in terms of interplay and interdependencies, exploring hypothetical disaster scenarios and how the inter-regional units can be best utilized.
2. Incorporating all region-wide units in individual agency run-cards, enabling local CAD’s to automatically utilize inter-regional units without human intervention during major disasters or high incident rates

Support a unified command system

Ideally, the Incident Command System facilitates the identification of resources for the simultaneous assignment, staging, and management of numerous resources. Additionally, any system for incident command would benefit from:

• The ability to exchange data between CAD’s
• The ability to distribute CAD information among neighboring jurisdictions.
• The ability to understand the status of coverage and/or the need for reallocations of first responder units in neighboring service areas.
  

Deccan’s LiveMUM features several capabilities to address these issues:

1. LiveMUM can operate on any CAD system; its implementation can thus homogenize the command software language and format.
2. With LiveMUM, users can combine any number of communications centers into a common ICS, combining assorted CAD data and presenting it in an easy to understand, at-a-glance format.

Address critical infrastructure protection

The protection of critical infrastructure depends upon a well-coordinated Emergency Operations Plan developed well in advance. In order to execute the plan efficiently, a department should evaluate the possible impact of any changes in infrastructure which would affect EOP’s before their implementation. These evaluations should consider the most favorable methods of rapidly re-deploying resources if a disaster suddenly and drastically changed the infrastructure.

Another concern is a direct threat to the Comm. Center itself. Critical infrastructure is vulnerable to CAD failure, data loss, and even direct attacks in the form of computer viruses and worms. Departments must take adequate steps to prepare for these dangers and their consequences.

To protect critical infrastructure, agencies must be prepared for:

• Loss of CAD functionality.
• CAD vulnerability to computer viruses, worms, hardware, or power failure, etc.
• Loss of critical data.
• Unforeseeable consequences from infrastructural changes during disaster scenarios.
• Inability to reallocate resources under altered states of infrastructure.
• Inability to properly utilize available mutual aid.

Deccan’s ADAM software addresses infrastructure protection by:

1. Identifying critical factors in a community and the potential impact of probable hazards and risks—all with data-based accuracy not possible using typical planning methods.
2. Rapidly projecting the effects of changes in apparatus availability, road networks, and traffic patterns and how such changes might impact infrastructure.
3. Providing public safety managers with an opportunity to plan in advance for incidents at critical facilities, thereby promoting a rapid, organized, and sequential response.
4. Creating simulations of infrastructural failures—dam and bridge collapses, for example—and how best to compensate for these events.
    

In situations directly affecting CAD functionality, Deccan’s LiveMUM and BARB can provide the following solutions:

1. When a CAD is disabled, LiveMUM and BARB can help to keep the department functional until the CAD is again operational. LiveMUM and BARB can store all necessary data before a CAD goes down and require only manual renewal of unit deployment to keep current with real-time developments.
2. LiveMUM can help dispatchers to track units while BARB informs them of which units to dispatch—even if the CAD is disabled.
3. LiveMUM and BARB can operate together on a laptop and do not have to be located at the Comm. Center should the need for remote monitoring and operations arise.

BARB for Disasters
An extension of BARB - BARB for Disasters - is used to build massive run cards in planning for a catastrophic event. This extension of BARB would automate the building of time-sensitive run cards up to and over 1000 deep. In addition, BARB for Disasters can incorporate unlimited mutual-aid stations to support unpredictable disaster scenarios. Thus, if a major event occurs, departments can automatically switch to the pre-planned disaster operation with the advantage of having the data and map layers already configured within the CAD system.

Key Benefits of “BARB for Disasters”:

• Automatically creates extensive run-cards for major disaster responses.
• Makes major or minor changes to the run cards quickly, inexpensively, and “on-the-fly.”
• Expertly handles multiple station/unit orders and mutual-aid stations for DHS.
• Permits the building of run cards using staging areas that can be switched on in the CAD as required.

Area-wide Mutual-aid Response

Major disasters generally choke the CAD system and tax a department’s available resources. Extensive run cards, including area-wide mutual-aid stations, can cope with large-scale disasters; but without an automated system, the process is tedious and error-prone.

BARB can include mutual aid agreements at both the regional and statewide levels and logically select units for the scene with the shortest response times. At dispatch, it can provide the deployment officer with a comprehensive list of available units and their types. It can automate within minutes the building of massive response time-sensitive run cards up to and over 500 deep.

Interoperability

BARB for Disasters also fosters interoperability for earth-moving equipment, tow trucks, water rescuers, animal welfare personnel, emergency room capacities, and many other resources. It can show the logic of staging areas; it can pick lists for a host of resources including their response times. All such information, once researched and defined, can be entered into the CAD through BARB and changed or updated as rapidly as required.

Area-wide information sharing

BARB generates an area-wide analysis of all the combined stations, road networks, travel speeds, unit locations, and capabilities. If all of this data is shared throughout the affected region, then each communication center involved will work with identical information and interact in a manner that fully promotes interoperability.

This exchange of information must be sustained on an ongoing basis. Whenever one of the participating agencies changes its plan – e.g., station relocations, addition of new stations, equipment/unit relocations or alterations in road networks and speeds – run cards for the other departments must be updated. BARB is the vital automation tool rendering it easy to transfer updates and changes.


Disaster planning by staging areas

Staging areas serve as interim stations for available units not yet assigned. In BARB, each staging area can actually be designated a “station” and incorporated into the pick list. During an actual disaster, BARB would identify not just the closest station but also the closest staging area from which to request units. This is another significant feature of interoperability which can be tested theoretically and incorporated in a disaster plan.

Planning for Earthquake, Wildfire, Terrorist Attack

When the resources of a fire department are stretched thin—during wildfire or an earthquake, for example—BARB can build pick lists which specify available apparatus in outlying stations along with their type, their station’s location, and network of roads ‘in.” A multi-county pick list can be easily built so that the number of available apparatus is at least 10 times greater than previously supposed.

In addition, BARB can incorporate Mutual Aid Agreements, at both the regional and state levels, and logically select distant units with the fastest response times to the scene. BARB can thus give a deployment officer a comprehensive list of available units and their capabilities at the time of dispatch. Using BARB, the department can also factor the deployment of earth-moving equipment, brush clearing units, air tankers, and other vital resources.