Disaster Preparedness | Emergency Response

Featured Videos

GSN 2012 Award Winners/Finalists/Sponsors: Dubhe Beinhorn, VP Public Sector, AtHoc, Inc

Dubhe Beinhorn describes AtHoc, Inc, winner of GSN’s 2012 award for “Best Mass Notification Solutions,” as a company that operates in one sector only: critical communications for crisis management....

GSN 2012 Award Winners/Finalists/Sponsors: Covia Labs, David Kahn, CEO

Covia Labs received the award for “Best Interoperable First Responder Communications” in the 2012 Awards Program for its “Alert & Respond” software platform and application that provides voice/...

GSN 2012 Award Winners/Finalists/Sponsors: Drew Morin, Chief Technology Officer, TeleCommunication Systems

TeleCommunication Systems (TCS), which entered its “Commercial Mobile Alerts System” in the 2012 Awards Program, was named a Finalist in the “Best Mass Notification Systems” category. Drew Morin, who...

GSN 2012 Award Winners/Finalists/Sponsors; Jim Montagnino, CEO/President, NC4

El Segundo, CA based NC4 specializes in situational awareness, emergency response and event planning, according to Jim Montagnino. Its crime fighting solution “Situational Awareness for Enforcement’s...

IACP Conference, 2012: Stephen Meer, Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Intrado, Inc,

Stephen Meer, one of the founders of Intrado, Inc of Denver, Colorado, indicates that his company provides services and products to the 9-1-1 infrastructure, which he says is a very complicated...

IACP Conference 2012: Mike Bostic, Director of Customer Advocacy, Security and Transportation Service, Raytheon

Mike Bostic of Raytheon points out that he spent 34 years as an Assistant Chief in the LAPD, where he worked about a third of that time in technology and communications. And one thing he...

IACP Conference 2012: Kevin P. Madden, Solutions Architect for Public Safety, Cisco Sytems

Kevin Madden discusses the nation’s first demonstrated multi-vendor interoperable Public Safety Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, which was deployed by a consortium of companies including Cisco and...

IACP Conference 2012: Dave Snyder, Spillman Technologies, Inc.

ASIS 2012: Paul Christin, Homeland Security Industy Manager, ESRI

ESRI is the innovator of GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, which Paul Christin describes as a way of managing information and understanding it geographically, or plotting information,...

GSN Awards Dinner Winners and Sponsors: Tony Wilder, Incident Commander, Southern Agency Type 1 Red Team

The Bastrop County, TX Unified Command was named Winner of GSN’s 2011 Award for “Most Notable Emergency Response – Federal, State or Local.”. Trophies were awarded to the Incident Commanders of...

GSN 2011 Awards Dinner Winners and Sponsors: Elizabeth Cavasso, Type 1 Planning Section Chief, US Forest Service, National Incident Management Organization (NIMO)

GSN 2011 Awards Dinner Winners and Sponsors: Mike Fisher, Emergency Management Coordinator, Bastrop County, TX

GSN 2011 Awards Dinner Winners and Sponsors: Dan Kleinman, Incident Commander, National Incident Management Organization (NIMO)

GSN 2011 Awards Dinner Winners and Sponsors Interviews: Bill Eckerd, Director of Sales for Strategic Account Group, Verint Video Solutions

Verint Video Solutions was a 2011 Winner of “Best Intelligent Video Surveillance Solution” for its Nextiva Physical Security Information Management System (PSIM). According to Bill Eckerd, the PSIM...

News

New York City to conduct groundbreaking air flow dispersion study

Thu, 2013-04-25 08:11 AM

Manhattan

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory plan landmark tests this summer in the city’s streets and subway system to determine how...

FEMA will try using binding arbitration to resolve disputes by applicants for disaster assistance

Wed, 2013-04-24 03:08 PM

In accordance with the Sandy Recovery and Improvement Act, which was signed into law by President Obama last January, FEMA is planning to set up a pilot program to organize approximately 50 to 75...

New flu strain kills 22, but WHO says no human-to-human transmission

Wed, 2013-04-24 08:07 AM

Flu virus

The death toll in China from a previously-unknown flu strain has risen to 22, but world health officials said although avian influenza A(H7N9) is dangerous, there is currently little evidence the...

Canada arrests two suspects with Al Qaeda ties in train terror plot

Tue, 2013-04-23 08:15 AM

Via Rail train

Two men face terror charges in a Toronto courtroom on April 23 after Canadian law enforcement foiled their alleged plot to attack passenger trains in the country.

TSA delays knife order for more input

Tue, 2013-04-23 07:15 AM

The TSA will hold off on its order to allow smaller-bladed knives and other previously-prohibited items back on board commercial aircraft pending further input from the public. The order would have...

Wheels of justice begin to turn for surviving Boston bombing suspect

Mon, 2013-04-22 02:48 PM

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The brother that is the government’s remaining suspect in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing has been officially charged with using a weapon of mass destruction, while the White House said he will be...

GAO concludes that FEMA should study how other agencies train their disaster reservist workforce

Mon, 2013-04-22 02:11 PM

To enhance its training of reservists and meet its goal of having qualified reservists, the FEMA Administrator should examine the training practices of other agencies with disaster reservist...

FEMA to telephone survey 6,000 individuals on its community preparedness efforts

Mon, 2013-04-22 12:25 PM

FEMA is planning to conduct a telephone survey among 6,000 individuals or households to determine the effectiveness of the awareness, recruitment and public information campaigns it runs on behalf of...

Texas blast claims first responders’ lives

Mon, 2013-04-22 08:55 AM

West, Texas

As Texas emergency workers and response officials comb through the remains of the town of West following a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant there, over a dozen have been confirmed killed, with...

Boston mayor plans re-opening of Copley Square

Mon, 2013-04-22 08:20 AM

Copley Square
after bombing

A week after two explosions rocked the finish line of the Boston Marathon in the city’s busy Copley Square, Boston mayor Thomas Menino previewed plans to reopen the area after investigators clear the...

Congress looking for answers in Boston bombing

Mon, 2013-04-22 07:54 AM

Tsanaev capture
MA State Police photo

After initial heartfelt congratulations to federal, state and local law enforcement following the massive manhunt and subsequent apprehension of the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing,...

Boston shut down as bombing suspects chased down

Fri, 2013-04-19 07:38 AM

Boston bombing
suspects

The greater Boston area is shut down with bus and subway service suspended and local businesses and universities closed, as federal and local authorities chase down two men believed to have carried...

Company News

IACP 2012: New Garmin tool could help government search-and-rescue teams

When asked at the IACP show in San Diego what the “latest-and-greatest” product they are offering to government customers, the folks at the Garmin booth were quick to name their Rino 655T.

This handheld GPS navigation device looks like many of the company's other devices, but the 655T model offers one intriguing feature – the capability to plot the precise geographic location of as many as 20 different users of this model on a GPS map displayed on the monitor of a laptop computer.

Joint exercise tests UAV sense-and-avoid technology

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), a not-for-profit research and development organization and a university completed two weeks of flight testing "sense and avoid" technology that could help unmanned aircraft better integrate into the national air transportation system some day.

The MITRE Corporation and the University of North Dakota (UND) developed automatic sense and avoid computer software algorithms that were uploaded onto a NASA Langley Research Center general aviation aircraft, said the group on Oct. 2.

Ocean Power Technologies wins autonomous grant, tests for PowerBuoy

Pennington, NJ-based Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (“CRADA”) with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate to perform a new round of in-ocean tests on its autonomous PowerBuoy application for ocean surveillance.

Mobile app allows first responders to communicate without LMR coverage

Raytheon Company said it has developed a mobile application for PCs, tablets and smart phones that allows first responders to interact and communicate without the use of land mobile radios (LMRs).

As a part of Raytheon's Interoperability Communications Suite, the new mobile application allows authorized personnel to use tablets and smartphones as "virtual radios."

Raytheon is demonstrating the new application at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) annual conference and exposition from Aug. 20 - 22 in Minneapolis. MN.

PPM 2000 computer-aided dispatch and MIR3 notification to collaborate on emergency response

PPM 2000, a provider of end-to-end incident management software, announced on August 14 the integration of its computer-aided dispatch component, Perspective DispatchLog, with the Intelligent Notification (IN) platform from MIR3, an innovator of real-time intelligent notification and response technology.

AtHoc appoints Deven Kalra as its vice president of engineering

AtHoc, Inc., a supplier of network-centric emergency mass notification systems (EMNS), announced on July 30 that Deven Kalra has joined the company as vice president of engineering.

Raytheon completes design phase of DARPA’s tactical maritime platform

Raytheon announced on July 18 that it completed the preliminary design phase of the Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform (TEMP) program awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The TEMP program is an innovative system of modular technologies – including air and sea cargo transport, cargo transfer and onboard support resources – that enable commercial container ships (cargo ships) to support humanitarian aid and other non-combat missions through the use of advanced technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), according to Raytheon.

Texas DPS selects long-range surveillance provider for aircraft

The Texas Department of Public Safety chose Helinet Technologies to develop and implement a microwave downlink and satellite solution for the DPS Aircraft Section's recently-acquired Pilatus PC-12 NG Spectre airplane.

Commentary and Opinions

It’s time to get serious about chemical and biological preparedness

In Washington, attention has shifted from the daily grind towards a hyper-partisan presidential campaign. Battle lines are sharply cast between Republican challenger, Governor Mitt Romney, and the incumbent, President Barack Obama.

While all eyes are on the economy, national security challenges abound. Obama’s killing of Bin Laden and targeting terrorists with Predator strikes argues his prowess on terrorism. Iran’s nuclear weapon pursuits are hindered by cyber-sabotage.

Disaster Preparedness 2011: Ensuring Cloud service continuity during disasters

It’s a distressing feeling when you’re in the middle of an unfolding disaster, and suddenly it hits you -- your plans and resources are being overwhelmed by the event. At this point or soon thereafter, you’ll likely ask yourself a series of questions: How and when will we re-establish services for customers and employees? What will this disaster cost us in terms of revenue, reputation and recovery expenses? How can we avoid being in this position again?

Disaster Preparedness 2011: New wind-damage-resistant windows

The word tornado came from the Spanish word "tronada" which means a thunderstorm. Also known as a twister, a tornado is a violent spiral-shaped storm with a rapidly rotating column of air rising upward, forming a vortex. The vortex has relatively low pressure at the center and is shaped like a funnel.

Virginia Tech shooting shows campus security has come a long way

When reports emerged from Blacksburg, VA, last Thursday afternoon that a shooter had descended upon Virginia Tech’s campus, confirmation that a campus police officer had been killed and headlines of a possible second victim overwhelmed news channels, Websites and every social media outlet.

Throughout the day, there was a jarring litany of that old cliché by anyone that remembers the unspeakable tragedies of April 2007, which claimed 33 lives on Virginia Tech’s campus:

History really does repeat itself.

Disaster Preparedness 2011: Using wirelessly connected monitoring equipment to protect HazMat teams

From the time it capsized at a refinery dock in Texas City, the listing barge -- loaded with 235,000 gallons of sulfuric acid -- began seeping its toxic, corrosive load into the 30-foot-deep waterway.

The water mixing with sulfuric acid inside the hull had begun to corrode the steel. This process reduced the barge’s structural integrity and created reactions inside the sealed compartment that generated a cloud of highly-flammable, highly-pressurized hydrogen gas -- just one spark away from a calamitous blast.

It was time for new plan.

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Recent Disaster Preparedness Videos

IACP Conference, 2012: Stephen Meer, Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Intrado, Inc,

Stephen Meer, one of the founders of Intrado, Inc of Denver, Colorado, indicates that his company provides services and products to the 9-1-1 infrastructure, which he says is a very complicated ecosystem with lots of different constituent groups. The 9-1-1 infrastructure is like an iceberg, he says, with a little piece that delivers services to the public that is above the water line, and a massive infrastructure under the water line that supports it in operating seamlessly, continuously, dealing with all the regulations and issues in the world of public safety communications.

IACP Conference 2012: Mike Bostic, Director of Customer Advocacy, Security and Transportation Service, Raytheon

Mike Bostic of Raytheon points out that he spent 34 years as an Assistant Chief in the LAPD, where he worked about a third of that time in technology and communications. And one thing he learned from his LAPD experience is that everything the military needs, so does public safety. But Raytheon is in the business of solving operational problems rather than selling boxes and devices, he says, and as a systems integrator the company sells solutions to specific sets of problems.

IACP Conference 2012: Kevin P. Madden, Solutions Architect for Public Safety, Cisco Sytems

IACP Conference 2012: Dave Snyder, Spillman Technologies, Inc.

Spillman Technologies is a vendor of public safety software used by law enforcement, fire and emergency management agencies, according to Dave Snyder. The company provides an integrated solution and specializes in multi-jurisdictional assignments involving agencies that want to collaborate with other agencies with information systems in large geographic areas. Snyder points out that the company has been in business for almost 30 years and has an extraordinary degree of stability, and its customers can count on major upgrades each year at no cost.

ASIS 2012: Paul Christin, Homeland Security Industy Manager, ESRI

ESRI is the innovator of GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, which Paul Christin describes as a way of managing information and understanding it geographically, or plotting information, visualizing the data, and analyzing the dots to make sense out of the data. The company sells to 40 verticals, one of which is homeland security. Christin describes how GIS technology is used for planning major events, such as political conventions or the recent NATO conference in Chicago.

Upcoming Events

Event Details	Dates of Event
Critical Security Controls International Summit 2013	Apr 26 - May 2
Secure India @Bangalore 2013	Apr 29 - May 4
Cloud Security Alliance CCSK Certification Training	May 6 - 7
SANS Security West 2013	May 9 - 19
SANS Brisbane 2013	May 13 - 18
GovSec Conference & Expo	May 14 - 15
CPM East Conference & Expo	May 14 - 15
TREXPO - The Law Enforcement Expo	May 14 - 15
SANS Austin 2013	May 19 - 24
DoD VA Healthcare Training Forum	May 20 - 23
ISSA-LA Fifth Annual Information Security Summit	May 21 - 21
Southwest Microwave Seminar	May 21 - 21
Southwest Microwave Seminar	May 21 - 21
Southwest Microwave Perimeter Defense Seminar	May 21 - 21
Southwest Microwave Seminar	May 22 - 22
Transport and Logistics of Hazardous Material	May 27 - 28
Southwest Microwave Seminar	May 28 - 28
Border Management Southwest Summit	May 29 - 31
Cyber Security Conference & Expo	May 30 - 30
Mobile Device Security Summit 2013	May 30 - Jun 6
Security Analytics Summit 2013	May 30 - Jun 6
Cyber Security Conference & Expo	May 30 - 30
Southwest Microwave Seminar	May 30 - 30
SANS Malaysia @ MCMC 2013	Jun 3 - 8
2013 SIA Government Summit	Jun 4 - 5
Southwest Microwave Seminar	Jun 4 - 4
NCT: CBRNe Israel, 4 - 6 June 2013, Tel Aviv	Jun 4 - 6
SEL Modern Solutions Power Systems Conference	Jun 5 - 7
Mission Command	Jun 10 - 12
Cyber Securty Brainstorm	Jun 11 - 11
EDGE Summit 2013	Jun 11 - 11
IPv6 Summit 2013	Jun 14 - 16
SANSFIRE 2013	Jun 15 - 22
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's 2nd Biosurveillance Symposium	Jun 17
Biodetection Technologies 2013	Jun 18 - 19
Southwest Microwave Seminar	Jun 18 - 18

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IDenta says explosives ID kits identify underwear bomber’s PETN

Add Jerusalem-based Identa Corp. to the handful of companies that issued statements in the wake of the failed...

Introducing the ‘In Case of Emergency’ iPhone app

Legalzoom.com, an online legal service, and Donate Life America (DLA), a non-profit organization, have created and are offering ICE App, intended to help users input the compreh...

MetaCarta releases version 4.5 of geographic search software

Cambridge, MA-based MetaCarta, Inc., a provider of geographic search solutions, has announced the launch...

Magnasphere rolls out high-security sensor

Waukesha, WI-based Magnasphere reports that its new high-security sensor, HSS, has completed its UL inspections and is r...

ICx introduces ClearPoint bottled liquid screener

Arlington, VA-based ICx T...

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