Disaster Preparedness Framework
Why Start in Ontario County?
After working with large, international clients, why would S3G Corporation focus on a mixed suburban/rural County as a base for regional planning? The answer came about in early 2004.
Budget.
We'll get to the reasons a little further on. Ontario County has a suburban mix on its North Side. Access to transportation and roadways extend from Indian trails in the 1600s to the canals and postal roads to one of the earliest and widest part of the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90). The midsection of the county surrounds Canandaigua Lake, one of several picturesque lakes in the Finger Lakes Region. The terrain of the midsection is made of glacial ridges and valleys caused by the recess of a previous ice age. The southern portion of the County and neighboring southern counties have had less access to infrastructure until the expansion of Interstate 390 and some connecting roadways.
This imbalance in geography and access has not kept the County from growing in size or relative wealth. However, the imbalance for disaster response needed to be addressed. Ontario County also has a significant number of subject matter experts in the area who either live (or do business) in the region or who live elsewhere and are from the region. Their combined talent could not be a match to the geographic limitations to bringing better communication services to the lesser served portion of the County.
The first breakthrough was the decision by the County and area representatives to inventory the communications assets of the County and to propose a series of fiber optic routes to bridge the areas in which there were deficiencies. Although some interest groups may have resisted the idea, many of the service providers in the region began to recognize that the County was more likely to be a partner in development more than a potential competitor. The County also had, as its objective, the desire to bring fiber optic services to every municipality in the County. In addition, fiber optics to key medical and research institutions were included in the plan. Creation of a Local Development Corporation and its funding took place from 2005 through 2007.
The next breakthrough started in about early 2007. Communications facilities have a greater capacity to function on their own in the event of a major catastrophe. Communications networks are also beginning to develop with automatic self healing and energy scavenging properties. The life of older systems may have been hours, newer systems may last days and future systems may last longer. The ability for self healing networks is also moving off of large networks and all the way down to tiny sensors.
Again, budget.
Disasters have some common factors when they occur, but the number of people affected and the number of people involved in disaster response where they occur are both far fewer. As distance becomes less of an issue, speed across that distance is increasing. It is becoming less costly to develop a disaster preparedness framework and communications architecture for a smaller population.
In order to get a team in the Finger Lakes and a team in Chicago working together, in 2004, it was far more economical to begin to plan a framework starting with the Finger Lakes. Now, it is becoming more economical to build a communications architecture to support communications for a disaster framework. The population density of the region, support some of the same types of systems deployed in larger cities, but the suburban/rural demand and range characteristics result in very different uses of the same technologies.
Disaster Preparedness: Timing and Planning
Disaster solutions do not always lend themselves to long term planning. For example, one client discovered during a Gulf Coast Hurricane that their disaster plan did not provide for remote data operations. Because the technology tools were in place, key team members (and their families) were moved to Illinois in advance of the storm. Their data service contract was flexible enough to allow the team to set up temporary offices in Illinois and the essential data was moved to Illinois while the team was still in transit. However, many other companies in the same region did not have the luxury to be able to complete similar plans in the face of the same disaster. While fortunate, the example was not typical.
"All Hazard" plans require community planning on a massive scale. The length of time for warning may vary from total surprise, to days or even weeks in which to prepare a response.
Planning is the phase in which the type of disaster us unknown. It affords an opportunity to anticipate both the usual and the unusual. What may happen does not dictate what will happen. Some disasters may be more likely in one place rather than another, but a framework has to be robust enough to anticipate the unusual. By its very nature, a framework is never truly complete. Planning requires preparation for the expected and the unknown.
Elements of a plan for flood, fire, terrorism or war may be just as relevant in a Gulf Coast State, California or Illinois. A framework for disaster preparedness will allow for the development of a comprehensive system of best practices in order to support a number of organizations in their own development of disaster plans suitable for a given region. In our proposal to Air Force Research Laboratories, we began with a template of a less densely populated region (the Finger Lakes) for several reasons:
- Extremely dense populated regions may have secondary disaster planning issues caused by an evacuation.
- Extremely dense populated regions will have a greater number of service agencies to coordinate than the Phase I budget allows.
- Extremely dense populated regions are not a underserved as less densely populated regions.
- In terms of land mass, there are a greater number of less densely populated regions.
The advanced methodologies are meant to be replicated and modified within the framework to suit anticipated and specific regional threats and to provide response scenarios for more unusual situations. The proposed methodologies are meant to be supplemented with specific expertise provided by entities and individuals with skills to improve or modify a proposed system.
A framework is better than a series of checklists because the frame work can constantly be improved as new experts participate or as new technologies emerge. While checklists begin to age almost as soon as they are filled out, the framework structure allows for constant improvement. Another component of a framework is testing. While mass evacuations cannot be staged as part of a drill, recent disaster have provided sufficient examples to allow for modeling based on human experience, rather than guesswork or live drills.