COMCARE MAKES RECOMMENDATIONS TO SPUR EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
Public safety and wireless experts led by ComCARE Alliance unveiled recommendations Tues. for bridging communications gaps among hospitals, public health agencies and emergency responders to respond to homeland security and other emergencies. Group called for electronic directories of emergency agencies that would allow federal, state and local officials to disseminate information on threats such as bioterrorism without “alerting the public on CNN or the emergency broadcast system.” At Washington news conference, officials said they wanted to be able to share mapping data to coordinate responses to incidents. ComCARE Founder David Aylward said group still was working on overall projection of program’s cost, but told reporters that for communications infrastructure, federal component could come to $150 million, including possible reprogramming of existing funds. Program, developed after emergency communications problems cropped up in Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also calls for better training and increased deployment of 911 capabilities.
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In case of national emergency electronic registry, effort would create standards-based, nonprofit linkup of registries of emergency and other responder agencies. If endowed with electronic messaging capability, system would allow “discreet” sharing of information in real time to first responders to particular incident, ComCARE said. Problem now, it said, is that there’s no way to communicate with all 911 centers in U.S. at same time. President could use registries to alert all emergency agencies of impending threat for particular area, or system could activate systems for putting out public alerts, ComCARE said. It said it envisioned system as undertaken by public/private effort, which in some areas already was under way. For mapping, group proposed that govt. provide each emergency agency that didn’t already have shared electronic mapping capability with “single shared, secure and cost efficient mapping capability.” Aylward said issue of emergency responders’ attempting to improve communications between agencies that had different systems was nothing new, but this particular effort to find common platforms was driven by Sept. 11 attacks. He said officials involved in effort, which is backed by CTIA, planned to start vetting program on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington Tues.
“Public health is the weakest link in public safety today,” said Dr. Mohammad Akhter, exec. vp of American Public Health Assn. He said 10% of public health departments didn’t have e-mail and 50% didn’t have broadband access. “When you are in a situation like this, you really have great difficulty communicating,” he said. Those communications needs play even greater role in bioterrorism events because “more complex response system” comes into play, Akhter said. Lack of similar systems and communications protocols creates hurdle for having early warning system in place for those agencies, he said. One effort of project is to raise level of communications systems of public health agencies to “what is available in the private sector” to link them together to information that could be made available to right people faster in responding to emergency, he said. For early warning system to work in given community, public health department has to be connected to “front-line emergency responders,” such as emergency rooms and labs, he said.
Richard Taylor, 2nd vp, National Emergency Number Assn., also cited gaps in 911 system. For example, he cited PBX- based systems that provided 911 centers with location of PBX rather than of particular caller. That meant that if college dorm resident called 911, 911 center would see location of caller’s PBX rather than of student, Taylor said. He cited need for legislation that would require PBX systems to provide location technology to 911 centers. Taylor, who administers N.C.’s Wireless 911 Board, also said there was need for in-vehicle automatic crash notification systems, such as OnStar, not only to provide immediate data to internal call centers but also to 911 centers.
To update communications capabilities of emergency agencies, ComCARE report called for “the modern equivalent of a single node in each state where emergency data can be sent by Civil Defense agencies, telematics, wireless carriers and others for distribution to and among agencies in the state.” Report recommended “secure channel” so federal agencies could communicate directly with emergency responders such as hospitals and public health departments. For emergency and public health agencies that didn’t have broadband connections yet, report called for 3-year federal grant program to be administered by governors that would provide at least one broadband connection to all emergency agencies, along with other capabilities.