Technology to the Rescue: Improving Emergency Response Communications

When disaster strikes, probably the biggest barrier to mounting fast, efficient response is the ability to quickly, efficiently get appropriate information into the hands of people who can use it to take action.

You might think that with modern technology, it would be easy to communicate and distribute information. Yet interoperability and other issues often get in the way.

“Sharing information is one of the biggest problems with disaster recovery,” said Steven Ray, a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon and co-founder of the Disaster Management Initiative, during a TMCnet video interview with TMC Group Editorial Director Erik Linask (News - Alert). “People don’t have the right information at the right time. If you can’t build good situational awareness, you don’t know what to do.”

The Disaster Management Initiative, or DMI, is a group of educators, software developers, first responders and citizens working together to address this important issue.

Software engineers at Carnegie Mellon have been kicking around the idea of such an initiative since 9/11, and subsequent disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Sri Lanka tsunami further raised awareness about issues surrounding technology interoperability issues and communication challenges.

During 9/11, Ray said, the main issue was lack of interoperability between walkie-talkie systems used by various first responder units (fire, police, etc.). That was just voice communications; the issue is much deeper than that, encompassing also the problem of data sharing across systems that use various platforms and file formats.

DMI was formally started in 2009, and in March 2010 a workshop was held at which the organizers were overwhelmed by attendance by first responders, local volunteer organizations, software companies, and concerned individuals.

Since then, the organization has had opportunities to test some of its assumptions, and try out some concepts during the Japan tsunami, the Haiti earthquake, and a local gas main explosion in California.

One experiment, involving video feed and other communication systems across 40-odd first responder vehicles from a variety of organizations, proved just how bad the interoperability problem is.

Ray explained that DMI is organized using a consortium model, with participation open to anyone who can help—including emergency response practitioners and software companies. A group of people meets every Monday, donating their time to share best practices and explore new ideas.