Strong Angel III

[Enoch]

www.strongangel3.net/





Anticipating Complexity | Exploring Responses | Cultivating Resilience

THE SCENARIO

A Complex Contingency: A lethal and highly-contagious virus gradually begins to spread around the globe. Infection rates are high, deaths are frequent, and no vaccine is available. Cities all over the world fall under quarantine. Emergency services and medical centers are stressed and national government agencies, affected just as severely as the cities themselves, cannot provide assistance. And then the situation goes from bad to worse.

A terrorist cell, having long waited for such an opportunity, launches a wave of successful cyber attacks in a medium size city somewhere in the developed world, bringing down grid power, Internet access, land and cellular telephones. Other, more subtle, attacks follow, and it's difficult to sort out the mess.

If there were ever a time to work effectively together, this would be it.

Recognizing that a comparable scenario might one day unfold in real life, a diverse group of disaster responders, technologists, and community leaders will assemble in San Diego in August of 2006 for an event designed to simulate a truly complex disaster. Over the course of seven days, on the grounds of the San Diego Fire Training Academy, the campus of San Diego State University, and in the streets of the city, we will explore techniques and technologies for responding effectively when the response itself must adapt to cascading losses. By demonstrating what is possible through public and private-sector partnerships within a community, we intend to develop approaches to cultivating local resilience that may be useful for any city, here or abroad.

International Partners

We are welcoming colleagues participating from around the world, including Afghanistan, Canada, China, England, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and more.



THE DEMONSTRATION

What will happen? Organizations and individuals participating in Strong Angel III are volunteering their time and resources to explore innovations in humanitarian response capabilities. This is not a trade show or a technology fair, with vendor booths, demos, and product literature. Nor is it an Exercise in the usual sense, with teams of first responders and a highly-scripted scenario. Instead, SA-III will focus on simulating those aspects of post-disaster conditions that specifically impact communication, information sharing, and coordination. The week-long demonstration will consist of a series of collaborative technical and non-technical experiments based on both lessons learned in past disasters and on emerging requirements for integrated operations. They are designed to test the interoperability, reliability, and flexibility of proposed social and technical solutions. Strong Angel III is a chance for vendors, humanitarian practitioners, First Responders, the military, and community leaders to explore capabilities, inter-operability, usability, and deployment with the specific intent that the solutions proposed be accessible globally. Strong Angel will provide an adverse environment designed to maximize learning, sharing and experimentation.

How will we do this? After an initial setup phase, teams from various organizations will spend the first few days conducting pre-defined experiments intended to meet one or more of the Demonstration Objectives. By early-mid week, many of the original experiments will have been completed and the Executive Team will begin to introduce additional challenges and constraints -- technical, social, operational, and environmental -- characteristic of humanitarian operations. These challenges will not be announced in advance. Our goal is to exert pressure on existing solution teams in such a way that they are forced to adapt on the fly to evolving requirements. Teams are expected to respond by collaborating with one another and recombining components and approaches from previous experiments into novel solutions incorporating the best of what they each have to offer. Each day will conclude with a briefing where team leaders will have a chance to share observations and lessons. Onsite press coverage will be extensive. The overall exercise and the individual experiments will be fully documented by participants and made publicly available.

Running in parallel with the core demonstration will be an emergent synergy operation called Shadowlite. The Shadowlite team will be remotely generating much of the content that will drive the acquisition, analysis, translation, and reporting tools in the Strong Angel Core. Shadowlite, led by Dr. Dave Warner, is responsible for agile incorporation of unanticipated opportunities and capabilities. During the Strong Angel III demonstration, the Shadowlites will be aggregating data, both structured and unstructured, from a wide variety of sources and making it available to the Core.

For more information about Strong Angel III, including a list of participating organizations, see the About page. For background on the Strong Angel series, please see the Wikipedia entry.


SPONSORS

Strong Angel III is a volunteer effort. We are grateful for the generous support of our sponsors:

* Microsoft
* Cisco Systems
* Bell Canada
* Google
* Naval Postgraduate School
* Sprint Nextel
* Save the Children
* Office of the Secretary of Defense
* CommsFirst
* NextNet Consulting
* Blueturn Media


About Strong Angel III

Overview

Strong Angel III is a low-key demonstration of globally relevant methods for improving resilience within any community under pressure. As an ad hoc demonstration Strong Angel III has no dedicated staff, no official funding source, and no policy or tasking legitimacy, and that has generally been true of each of the previous Strong Angel demonstrations as well. Historically, however, the Strong Angel series has a modestly successful record of effective civ-mil interaction and interesting solution sets to vexing problems. We can also note that each prior demonstration has altered some aspect of corporate or governmental behavior over the long-term.

For Strong Angel III we noted that our collective experiences over the first few years of the 21st century have already demonstrated the value of developing a highly effective disaster-response capability within an isolated community. Recent events like the tsunami in South East Asia, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, earthquakes in Pakistan, and now the prospect of a serious avian influenza outbreak have all made clear the need for a broad coalition of interests to assist in developing a robust and resilient community response appropriate for many cities across the globe. That capability should be competent, flexible, familiar, and highly reliable, and should include as many aspects of a community as it can. Strong Angel III will look at a few tasks (currently more than 40) related to that goal.

San Diego State University will host the Strong Angel team during late August 2006 to pursue that design. The team is drawn from US government agencies, the military, First Responders, domestic and international humanitarian organizations, academia, and private volunteers. The Strong Angel III demonstration itself will consist of a complex series of tasks addressing challenges seen in the real-world. The goal will be the establishing of a model of community resilience in the face of adversity.

Strong Angel III is particularly designed to explore techniques and technologies that support the principle of resilience within a community that finds itself isolated and vulnerable. In the demonstration the citizens of a community are deprived of power, cell phones, and Internet access, and are beyond the immediate reach of federal assistance. One key objective of this project is to effectively tap the expertise and creativity within an affected community, including through public-private partnerships. A second overarching objective is the development of social tools and techniques that encourage collaborative cooperation between responders and the population they serve during post-disaster reconstruction.

Background

The previous two demonstrations labeled Strong Angel took place in 2000 and 2004. Each was an effort to evaluate best-of-breed solutions to social and technical communications problems identified in conflict locations like Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Each was well-regarded and was moderately successful in describing opportunities for improvement in civil-military communications.

Like the two previous demonstrations, Strong Angel III will stress the principles of inclusion, cooperative response integration, effective resource management, civil-military collaboration, and creative synthesis.

The scenario for Strong Angel III

Although Strong Angel is not played as an exercise, there are scenario determinants that serve to enforce initial conditions and ongoing constraints. The initial conditions are the following:

In August of 2006 many countries in the world find themselves in the grip of a lethal pandemic. Despite an historical recognition of limited quarantine effectiveness, many areas in the US, like most urban centers across the globe, are under quarantine, enforced by the National Guard, and movement is highly restricted. As the virus spreads, regional hospitals and clinics are rapidly overwhelmed and alternate care sites appear anywhere they can, perhaps in nursing homes, schools, and stadiums. As the weeks drag on and workers manning public utilities fall ill, critical infrastructure begins to falter.

As the scenario unfolds, public health officials soon express urgent concern that a loss of their own regional communications system would have a significant impact since they would be unable to effectively coordinate disease containment and resource allocation. The city seeks help from the national capitol, but the central government is occupied with both the national crisis and with local outbreaks that have placed the central government itself in isolation. The city is told that they must ride out the initial phase alone.

None of this escapes the notice of disruptive organizations. Such groups have long understood that it is possible to do a great deal of harm by watching for (or triggering) an initial event, and then using a secondary attack against responders in order to amplify the morbidity of the original event. Well-versed in techniques of information warfare, they launch a series of cyber-attacks spread out over the course of several hours, targeting critical infrastructure at vulnerable nodes. Grid power is lost for the entire region and, with it, most Internet access. Restoration of services is hampered by illness, quarantine, and confusion. The local community, along with those military personnel deployed to enforce the quarantine, is faced with mounting their own response to these very difficult circumstances.



Implementation Plan

* Strong Angel III will be held in several locations near downtown San Diego, centered within the old Naval Recruit Training Center. The central site, on the abandoned third floor of an open-bay barracks, will include space for meeting areas, work areas, networking and communications equipment, and independent power and light. It will be staffed 24 hours a day.

* Over the course of a week, as the scenario unfolds, a team will conduct tasks to explore solutions proposed for lessons learned in Iraq, the South Asian tsunami response, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Each task is designed to improve the resilience of a community anywhere in the world that finds itself under multiple pressures and with little outside support.

* The tasks reflect problems experienced by members of the Strong Angel team in the real world. Some of these tasks will showcase cutting-edge technologies, products, and solutions from both the public and private sectors. Others will focus on the non-technical aspects of mutual aid, self-sustainment, and collaborative cooperation.

* The tasks will address a range of technical and sociological topics including redundant power, adaptive communications, austere network conditions, mobile workers, cross-organizational collaboration, mesh networking, satellite services, ephemeral workgroups, geospatial information systems, rapid assessment techniques, shared situational awareness, cyber security, alerting tools, community informatics, machine-based translation for multi-lingual communication, and social network development.

* As the demonstration unfolds, the Executive Team will begin to introduce additional challenges and constraints -- technical, social, operational, and environmental -- characteristic of humanitarian operations. Our goal is to exert pressure on existing solution teams in such a way that they are forced to adapt to evolving requirements on the fly; teams are expected to respond by collaborating with one another and recombining components and approaches from previous experiments into novel solutions.

* Review our web site at www.strongangel3.org for a more extensive description.
* Contact [e-mail] for more information.




People

Director: Dr. Eric Rasmussen (Professor,San Diego State University)

Regional Coordinator: Dr. Eric Frost (Professor,San Diego State University)

Communications Director: Brian Steckler (Professor, Naval Postgraduate School)

Academic Integration: Brooks King (President, U.S. Corporate Networks)

Application Integration: Robert Kirkpatrick (Lead Architect, Microsoft Humanitarian Systems)

Demonstration Design: Dr. Nigel Snoad (Lead Researcher, Microsoft Humanitarian Systems)

Civil-Military Integration: Pete Griffiths (Director, ISR Programs, OASD-NII Directorate)

Technical Communications Adviser: Doug Hanchard (Signature Engagements, Bell Canada)

Visual Communications: Milton Chen (CTO, VSee Lab)

Information Architecture: John Crowley (Web & Information Architect)

Volunteer Integration: Gay Mathews (CEO, North Hawaii Credit Union)

Information Coordination: Suzanne Mikawa (Informatics Coordinator, Strong Angel III)




Participating Organizations


Adesso
Akamai
Alcom - Golden Halo
Aqua Genesis
Audience Central
Autonomechs
Bell Canada
Bit9
Blueforce Development Corp.
Boeing Phantom Works
C4I Strategies
Care International
Carmanah
Center for Citizen Media
Center for Strategic Health Innovation
CH2M Hill
Cisco Systems
Command and Control Research Program
Computact Software Services
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
CyberCity 3D
DRASTIC
Ekahau
Entree Wireless
ESRI
ESS
FirstWatch
Future Technologies
GATR Technologies
GE Energy
GE Security
General Atomics
General Motors
Genesys
GeoFusion
Georgia Tech Radio Club
Ghani-Lockhart Framework
Google
Grainger
Harvard University - JFK School of Leadership
Hexayurt Refugee Shelters
HPWREN
IBM
IDV Solutions
IMC Science & Technology
Impact Instrumentation
Information Patterns
Intel
Intergraph Corporation
Internews
JEWC
Kingston Technologies
Linden Lab
Loma Linda University Medical Center
MAXIM Systems
MedWeb
Mercy Corps
Microsoft
MindTel
MITRE
National Institute for Urban Search & Rescue
Naval Health Research Center
Naval Postgraduate School
NextNet Consulting
OSI Network
Planetwalk
PXYIS
QUALCOMM
Roaming Messenger
Sahana, Lanka Software Foundation
San Diego State University
Save the Children
SDN Global
SeaBotix
Segway
SES Americom
Solectek
Sony Electronics
Spatial Data Analytics Corp (SPADAC)
SpeechGear
SpeechGear
Sprint Nextel
SRA International
St Electronics
Stat!Ref
Strong Angel
Sun Energy Solar
Sun Microsystems
Survive-All Industries
Tandberg
The Magicians
UK Royal Navy
United States Marine Corps
Univ South Florida Safety Security Rescue Research Center
US Joint Forces Command
USDA Forest Service
Virage
Virtual Agility
Visual Awareness Technologies & Consulting

[Enoch]

10 Commandments, 20 Recommendations, 30 Advisories for Crisis Responders document:

www.strongangel3.net/files/sa/10-20-30.pdf


Department of Defense Documents

Department of Defense Directive 3000.05 on Integrated Operations (unclassified):

www.strongangel3.net/files/dod/DoDD300.05.pdf

Letter of Support for Strong Angel III, Assistant Secretary of Defense Linton Wells (unclassified):

www.strongangel3.net/files/dod/wells_letter.pdf

Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study, On Transition to and from Hostilities (unclassified):

www.strongangel3.net/files/dod/Defense_Science%20_Board_2004.pdf


US Federal Government Documents

National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza:

www.strongangel3.net/files/usa/National_Strategy_for_Pandemic_Influenza.pdf

Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina, Lessons Learned:

www.strongangel3.net/files/usa/Katrina-lessons-learned.pdf

White House Report, A Failure of Initiative:

www.strongangel3.net/files/usa/failure_of_initiative.pdf


Crisis Response Analyses and Frameworks

Ghani-Lockhart Framework:

www.strongangel3.net/files/crisis/lockhart_framework.pdf

Indonesia Trip Report by Dr. Rasmussen:

www.strongangel3.net/files/crisis/Indonesia_Trip_Report.pdf

[Enoch]

[Enoch]

www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/technology/28iht-disaster.2618565.html?_r=1

Disaster simulation in U.S. finds computers vulnerable - Technology - International Herald Tribune

Published: Monday, August 28, 2006

SAN DIEGO — It would begin with a worldwide virus outbreak that had cities under quarantine, emergency workers overwhelmed and government agencies unable to cope. It would be compounded by cyberterror attacks that cut off power, phones and Internet access.

Such was the simulated crisis that teams from the Pentagon, nongovernmental agencies and several dozen technology companies set out to handle in a five-day exercise this month that was meant to showcase and test a new set of digital tools for responding to disaster.

The limitations of even the latest technology were made apparent in the simulation, when an effort to restore communications by setting up wireless networks resulted in a three-day data traffic jam.

Yet the problems encountered in the training effort, named Strong Angel III, failed to discourage the participants, a diverse group of more than 800 "first responders," military officers and software and wireless network experts - some from rivals like Microsoft and Google, working side by side.

"My view is that the value of Strong Angel is 70 percent in the social networks that will be created," said the organizer, Eric Rasmussen, a Navy surgeon and veteran of relief efforts on several continents. "What we do is try to bring people with disparate backgrounds together and ensure that they are forced to enter into a conversation."

More than $35 million in equipment was assembled in San Diego as part of the event, which was aimed at preparing for natural disasters, epidemics, terrorist attacks or the aftermath of a war.

On Aug. 21, the group began to assemble a makeshift command center at an abandoned building near the airport in San Diego. But a state-of-the-art wireless network, which was intended to route video images, satellite map coordinates and other data from an array of mobile computers, failed to come to life.

"Finally I said, 'Lights out! Everyone turn everything off and let's start over,'" said Brian Steckler, a computer scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, who was in charge of more than a dozen interlocking networks at the heart of the command center.

Hundreds of computers and even cellphones were shut down, and then the network was turned back on, segment by segment. Too many high-bandwidth applications had clogged the network, including a powerful video camera and "rogue" transmitters set up by participants intent on creating their own mini-networks.

Computer researchers call wireless networks of this type "hastily formed networks." But Steckler said his experience in the training session and in real disasters had led him to refer to them as "fragilely formed networks" instead.

But the technology roadblocks were balanced by notable successes, like the work of Google, Microsoft, ESRI, Intergraph and other companies to allow the sharing of a single set of digital satellite maps seamlessly and to overlay event data relayed from emergency workers throughout the San Diego area.

The new software capability relies on a Microsoft-designed system called Simple Sharing Extensions. It has been built on industry standards, like the Web protocol known as Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, which was designed to enable one-way data streams.

Such tools are valuable for disaster- response coordinators who require real-time data feeds from a variety of locations.

The Microsoft extensions will make it possible for the feeds to display constantly changing or even conflicting data streams from multiple sources.

Moreover, the achievement demonstrated that industry rivals like Microsoft and Google could cooperatively generate useful technologies.

Small teams of programmers from the two companies sat before laptops at adjacent tables to make sure that the Microsoft software connection system would transfer information to Google Earth, Google's visual mapping tool.

"I've been talking to Google all week," said Robert Kirkpatrick, lead architect of Microsoft's humanitarian systems group.

That is the kind of teamwork that Rasmussen had in mind when organizing the Strong Angel event, the third such exercise held since 2000.

[Enoch]

Dr. Eric Rasmussen (Director)




niusr5.blogspot.com/2009/02/dr-eric-rasmussen-keynotes-smart-power.html

Dr. Eric Rasmussen Keynotes SMART POWER Luncheon

On February 10th, Eric Rasmussen MD, MDM, FACP will keynote the SMART POWER Luncheon in San Diego. His bio:

ERIC RASMUSSEN, MD, MDM, FACP

Now CEO for InSTEDD, Dr. Eric Rasmussen was previously both Chairman of the Department of Medicine within Naval Hospital Bremerton near Seattle, Washington, and an advisor in humanitarian informatics for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds academic positions at several institutions and has been a Principal Investigator for both the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and for the National Science Foundation. He is a Reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the American Journal of Public Health, and for IEEE, and sits on several advisory boards, including the Crisis Management Resources Board for the National Academy of Sciences. He has a number of publications and has been awarded several personal, unit, and theater military decorations, including a Presidential Legion of Merit.

Dr. Rasmussen’s 25 year Navy career began with seven years enlisted in nuclear submarines before leaving the Navy to receive his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University. After graduate work in molecular biology at Los Alamos National Laboratory and teaching in Haiti, he completed a Residency in Internal Medicine and re-entered the Navy as Chief Resident in Medicine at the Navy Medical Center in Oakland, California. Subsequent Navy positions included three years as Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy’s Third Fleet.

Dr. Rasmussen, with an additional European Master’s Degree in Disaster Medicine, served on the Afghanistan humanitarian support planning staff within US Central Command Headquarters (CENTCOM) in 2002, and later as a physician on the Iraq Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) for the Iraq War in 2002-2003. As a member of the DART, he served within the International Humanitarian Operations Center in Kuwait and was later selected for the DARPA 2003 "Sustained Excellence in a Principal Investigator" award.

Further work as Director of the Strong Angel series of international humanitarian support demonstrations led to work in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2007, and in Indonesia as head of a Civil-Military Coordination Team for the tsunami response in Banda Aceh in early 2005. Later in 2005, he deployed with Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans, serving as a member of the Mayor’s Medical Reconstruction Task Force and coordinating a small portion of the relief response after Hurricane Katrina.

He now serves as a Member of Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, as a member of the US Congressional Global Surveillance Task Force, as a lecturer within the Applied Humanitarian Service track of the Monterey Institute for International Studies, and as a Permanent Advisor to the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Water Disasters.

Dr. Rasmussen has been married for more than 20 years to Demi, and has daughters Melissa and Faith. He divides his time between Palo Alto and a small ranch near Olympic National Park in western Washington.

[Enoch]

Eric Frost (Regional Coordinator)




Eric G. Frost
Associate Professor

Department of Geological Sciences
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-1020

Education:

* Ph.D., 1983 University of Southern California

Research Interests:

* Structural geology
* Field geology
* Regional tectonics
* Seismic reflection profiling
* Geologic imaging

Research Projects:

* Education and Outreach Web Site Development for the CSSC
* OptiPuter
* GEON - Geosciences Information Network
* Cal-(IT)2

Collaborative Visualization in Earth and Ocean Sciences:

margins.wustl.edu/Publications/Newsletters/Issue8.pdf

Do we really understand what we see:

ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=516523



Eric Frost at the SMART POWER Conference:




www.niusr.org/

MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD
FROM: Lois Clark McCoy
SUBJECT: SMART POWER Conference, San Diego, CA Feb. 10, 2009

On February 10th, 2009 I attended the National Institute for Urban Search & Rescue’s SMART POWER SEMINAR in the San Diego Conference Center. This effort initiated by NIUSR with the support of San Diego State University, HALO Corporation, and the Strategic Diamond Sponsor AFCEA, brought together more than 50 different ORGANIZATIONS AND AGENCIES involving DoD, California Department of Homeland Security, police, fire, border patrol, emergency medical and other entities across the country. Extensive use of social networking by George Bressler, Adjunct Professor of Homeland Security at San Diego State University; Brad Barker, President of HALO Corporation, and Dr. Eric Frost, Professor of Engineering and guiding light of the SDSU Viz Lab produced a series of "win-wins" of which all can be proud.

The principle speakers were the top of the line and were enthusiastically received. Dr. Dave Warner, M.D. PhD. received a standing ovation at the end of his graphic and illustrated experiences over his last seven trips to Afghanistan on humanitarian missions for both the Department of Defense and the Department of State.

The ATTENDEES LUNCHEON sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association (AFCEA) featured the outstanding physician, Dr. Eric Rasmussen, M.D., MDM, FACP. former Commander in the U.S. Naval Medical Corps, (RET).

He (Rasmussen) now serves as CEO for the Google inspired “InSTEDD” a medical research facility focused on Humanitarian Care in Palo Alto, California. Dr. Rasmussen has many years of experience in humanitarian relief, and disaster medical relief, both in the military and as a civilian. His talk opened a window into the complexity of today’s world and the need for greater effort on all our parts to better the abysmal fate of the oppressed around the globe. Our own country has pockets of need as well in times of life threatening disaster.

The topics discussed during the event showed areas needing improvement. Seven years after 9/11, communications remains a critical data interoperability problem between Federal, State and Local entities and the impacted public. Very capable first responder communications systems, telemedicine units and mobile command centers have been acquired, and are operating. However, data interoperability is the exception, rather than the rule. Part of this is cultural—police and fire units are more used to voice coordination, and this went fairly well. But data interoperability is impeded by a range of problems from incompatible protocols to the lack of shared crypto, to social issues (not used to data). Ultimately, when progress was made, serious technical efforts were needed to break through the obstacles, such as punching through multiple firewalls. Doing this efficiently and expediently AFTER a disaster has not proven possible in a timely manner causing further confusion, lifesaving time lost and a higher morbidity count.

Some of the problems are not merely technical: For example, Cultural differences in routine responses to everyday emergencies rub up against each other creating inter-agency friction. Some are procedural: MOUs have not been signed to ensure DHS and first responders are on common crypto. Some shortfalls might not emerge until a major disaster itself, e.g. the need for comms that are independent of the power grid (though we know from repeated real world experience that cell phones, land lines, broadcast, etc. are likely to be affected by power issues).

The combination of HARD POWER, police, fire, emergency management, responsible government agencies and the military can band together with SOFT POWER, i.e. Community agencies, Faith based agencies, the Red Cross and Salvation Army, the Food Bank and many other non-profit organizations. Most were in the room on the watershed day of February 10th. Joining Hard Power and Soft Power into a unified whole will provide SMART POWER. As we develop the intent and willingness to cooperate, and build coalitions that can withstand previous long competition for the same funding dollar among our vulnerable NGO communities, our Communities will become more Resilient to any Disaster that may strike us. Now is the time for strength and resilience provided by our freedom’s Communities? As one of our nation’s founders said, “We all hang together or we hang separately.” As a Nation faced with larger and larger Natural Disasters and a smaller percentage of our population willing to serve as first responders, that quote seems particularly appropriate. It’s becoming a “do-it-yourself” world rather like the days of the old West. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “Walk softly, but carry a Big Stick.” Soft power is the walk, Hard Power the Stick and the result is SMART POWER which is the winner in the game of providing the greatest safety for our people.

The most noticeable lack was the scarcity of attendees from Industry, both large and small. Industry is the heart and soul of all communities. Its rapid return to productivity is the answer to more rapid recovery from any disaster, either from Mother Nature or man-caused. 80% of all Industry in the United States is privately owned. Industry IS the Community’s driving power. It needs to be a vital part of SOFT POWER and included in the planning, training and exercising ot the SMART POWER training of our future.

With regard to a way ahead: Future events like this should be used as forcing functions to help promote SMART POWER with interoperability, collaboration and trust built BEFORE the Disaster. Solve the C2 data problems and save lives. Regional baselines are needed of each entity's capabilities and limitations. Adherence to standards should be forced - withhold funding from non-compliant systems. Leverage DHS services like DMIS, EDXL, and OPEN. Train, Train, Train! Exercises alone are not enough! Units need to be training together between exercises. Provide feedback from units into info sharing plans and equipment buys. Liaison Officers operating jointly before an event have proven to be incredibly useful when the Disaster strikes. Communicate, Cooperate, Build Coalitions and Save the Willing.

www.crisismappers.net/profile/EricGFrost?xg_source=activity

Eric Frost helps direct the SDSU Viz Center and the Homeland Security Master’s Program, which includes about 150 Homeland Security practioners from many Federal agencies, state and local government, NGOs, industry, and governments. Much of the program is based on actual interaction with real operational training in the US-Mexico border region, as well as many other international Homeland Security groups such as in Central Asia, India, Africa, and Indonesia.
Frost and his colleagues use many new technologies and protocols that are enhanced during exercises such as Strong Angel III (http://www.strongangel3.net/) for situational awareness for many challenges including H1N1 using tools such as www.geoplayer.com/gateways for Banda Aceh, Katrina, and Indonesia disasters. Frost and co-workers work with sensor networks, wireless and optical communication, data fusion, visualization, and decision support for first responders and humanitarian groups, especially crossing the civilian-military boundary, especially in unusual coalition areas such as Somalia, Afghanistan, and India.

Project(s)
Geospatial mapping for disasters in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mexico, Africa
Mapping and serving imagery for hand-launched UAVs
Visualization for Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief with Navy Services Oriented Architecture (SOA)
California Seismic Safety Commission interaction
Central Asia environmental and energy interaction
Bio-Fuels in difficult areas such as Afghanistan
collaboration with Government of Mexico for Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief
Indonesia partnership for education and disaster response

Website

www.inrelief.org

[Enoch]

Brian Steckler (Communications Director)





research.nps.navy.mil/cgi-bin/vita.cgi?p=display_vita&id=1023567913

Brian D. Steckler
Director, NPS Hastily Formed Networks (HFN) Research Group
Associate Chair for Special Programs
Mail Code: GE-208
Department of Information Science
Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences &
Cebrowski Institute for Information Innovation and Superiority
Monterey, CA 93943
Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: faculty.nps.edu/dl/HFN/index.htm

EDUCATION:
MS - Naval Postgraduate School, 1994
Information Technology Management
BA - University of Washington, 1987
Business Administration

NPS EXPERIENCE:

* Lecturer (IO/IW, Networking, Wireless)
* Associate Chair for Special Programs
* Director Hastily Formed Networks Research Group

OTHER EXPERIENCE: (View an extended list)

TEACHING INTERESTS:

* Hastily Formed Networks (HFNs) for Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief including flyaway kits for Comms, Power, EOC/NOC, Visualization, and Maslow/Human Needs
* Information Operations (Psychological Operations, Military Deception, Operations Security, Computer Network Operations (attack/defense/exploitation), and Electronic Warfare)
* Wireless Networking Technologies (WLAN vulnerabilities, security, management, administration, and technology development)

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

* Hastily Formed Networks (HFNs) for Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief including flyaway kits for Comms, Power, EOC/NOC, Visualization, and Maslow/Human Needs, Information Sharing with the NGO community, Working better at the civil-military boundary, and HA/DR as related to human systems integration and enterprises.
* Influence Operations, particularly using the World Wide Web for Influence Operations campaigns in support of US National Objectives and Information Operations.
* Wireless Networking Technologies
* Machine Language Translation technologies, especially as they apply to Information Operations.

AWARDS:

* Numerous military ribbons and awards over 20 year Navy career.
* Red Cross "Heroes" award recipient for work as a "Military Hero" in Hurricane Katrina, 2006.

BOARDS/MEMBERSHIPS:

* Trustee and Board Member - Elizabeth Hook Armstrong Foundation (Secretary), a $1.2M non-profit organization that provides a variety of services/grants to regional special-needs population from students to adults

KEYWORDS/TECHNOLOGIES:

* Keywords: Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief, Hastily Formed Networks (HFN), Information Operations, Computer Network Attack/Defense/Exploitation, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Technologies, Web Influence Operations, Machine Language Translation technologies, Psychological Operations, Military Deception, Computer Network Operations, Electronic Warfare, Operations Security, computer network security and vulnerability assessments




www.csrs-nps.org/logistica/public/staff_faculty/steckler.htm

Biography
Mr. Brian Steckler has over 20 years of experience in Navy communications and over 5 years of experience in managing the interoperability of communications at the inter-agency level. He is a U.S. Department of Defense recognized expert in mobile wireless network deployment and vulnerability assessment technologies, information technology applications for complex humanitarian disasters, computer network vulnerability assessments, web based information operations, mobile network operation centers, voice verification and recognition technologies, and various broadband internet access device technologies including fixed broadband wireless, ultra wideband, free space optics broadband, and broadband over power lines.

Mr. Steckler is the Executive Director of the Hastily Formed Networks (HFN) Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California, and also serves as the Associate Chair for Special Programs. His areas of teaching and research include: basic networking (LAN/WAN), Information Operations to include Computer Network Operations (Computer Network Defense, Attack, and Exploitation), Psychological Operations, Military Deception, Electronic Warfare, Operations Security, and Information Warfare.

Mr. Steckler brings significant operational experience with rapidly deployed wireless communications to the team, focusing on hastily formed networks (HFNs) with both wireless equipment solutions and interoperability at the civil-military boundary. In the past few years, he has led teams of NPS faculty/students and industry partners deploying wireless communications to the Andaman Coast of Thailand a few days after the Dec '04 SE Asia tsunami, and led a much larger team of NPS faculty/students and industry partners to wirelessly enable Bay St Louis and Waveland Mississippi for 5 weeks during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Brian has also facilitated and deployed NPS faculty/students and communications equipment to SE Asia and South/Central America on the US Navy's two hospital ships (USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort). These two humanitarian outreach missions used the flyway kit equipment suite (WiFi, WiMAX, VSAT, VoIP, LMRoIP) that Mr. Steckler and the NPS HFN Center has prototyped and refined the past 3 years. He was also the overall Communications Director for Strong Angel III, a large scale inter-agency/industry/academia exercise conducted in Summer 2005 that entailed an H5N1 avian flu pandemic in the San Diego CA region, and was sponsored by DHS Office of Science and Technology to both deploy and collect/analyze voice and data traffic during Operation Golden Phoenix, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake scenario training event in Summer 2007 in the Los Angeles Basin. Operation Golden Phoenix was the first combined DHS/DOD training exercise that featured data/voice interoperability challenges between city/local/county/state and federal (DOD/DHS) early responders. Brian plays a critical role in the planning and execution of similar real-world missions and exercises/training events that are being planned for FY08/09.

His last full-time experience in the corporate world was as the founder and CEO of a California business-class Internet Service Provider (ISP) and software engineering firm. He operated that business for 7 years until selling it in the Summer of 2001. Prior to that Brian had a successful 20-year career in the U.S. Navy, ten years as an enlisted Cryptologic Technician and ten years as a Commissioned Officer. During his Navy career he qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer, Supply Officer, Communications Officer, Operations Officer, Weapons Officer, CMS Custodian, Mine Countermeasures Officer and Officer of the Deck (underway).

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1987 in Business Administration. He received a Masters of Science in Information Technology Management from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994. Brian serves on several boards including a foundation that provides resources to mentally retarded children and adults.

[Enoch]

Pete Griffiths (Civil-Military Director)


Director, ISR Programs, OASD-NII Directorate

ISR Working Group Presentation R3:

www.ncoic.org/apps/group_public/search_view.php?document_id=10038