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ITR-RESCUE is part of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and its IT infrastructure is provided by Responsphere

May 2005

City of Champaign, IL, seeks to incorporate results from RESCUE program in their EOC

Over the past year, members of the RESCUE research team have formed a new partnership with the City of Champaign, Illinois. Led by RESCUE Co-Principal Investigator Marianne Winslett and Champaign officials, the partnership has been investigating ways to improve the city's disaster response capabilities by designing and implementing a testbed that incorporates concepts developed by RESCUE researchers. The Champaign testbed centers around GIS products developed by the Champaign County GIS Consortium, which include high-resolution aerial photographs, parcel information, streets and highways, and much more.  The testbed will also use real-time data gathered from a variety of kinds of sensors located throughout the city, 911 call locations, GPS data from first responders, and camera feeds. The plan calls for the GIS to be displayed on a screen in the city's EOC, with the sensor and 911 feeds to be shown as overlays.  From the pattern of sensor and 911 call information on the map, the EOC staff will be able to see where to deploy resources most effectively.  The goal is to have the testbed running this summer.  In future phases of the program, the GIS and its overlays will be fed into the fire and police mobile command vans, enabling workers in the mobile units to have access to the same information as those in the EOC.

The city of Champaign is enthusiastic about the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from new IT developments from the RESCUE program. Time and funds permitting, the testbed may prove to be a valuable asset for other cities, or may find its way into popular EOC information technology products.

RESCUE social science researchers conduct interviews on the usage of advanced Information Technology for emergency management in the City of Los Angeles

Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder , Natural Hazards Center , have conducted more than forty interviews with key personnel from departments in the City of Los Angeles whose General Managers are representatives on the Emergency Operations Board (EOB).  These departments include the Emergency Preparedness Department, Information Technology Agency, Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Fire Department, Recreation and Parks, the Board of Public Works - Bureau of Engineers, Transportation, Water and Power, Harbor, and Airport. 

Interview questions have focused on two areas: 1) identifying current technologies supported by each department for information/data gathering, information analysis, information sharing (with other agencies) and information dissemination to the public; and 2) identifying security concerns and protocols for data sharing between agencies.  Personnel were also asked to describe the role their department plays in emergency preparedness and planning as well as their participation in any recent disaster response.

Technologies commonly discussed included radios; text communication devices such as Blackberries, PDAs, and cell phones; Information Management Systems; GIS applications; and GPS for navigation and decision making through Computer Aided Dispatch.  Interoperability, redundancy, reliability, ease of use, bandwidth, and security issues were pervasive throughout the interviews. 

The goals of this research thrust are twofold: to provide to the City of Los Angeles EOB a catalogue of technologies used by their departments in day-to-day operations as well as during times of disasters, and to inform the ongoing work of colleagues who are developing advanced information technologies for the RESCUE project.

Preliminary findings on the barriers to the adoption of technology can be found in the RESCUE Research Highlights papers which will soon be available on the RESCUE web site (www.itr-rescue.org).

Much of U.S. still lacks the technology to find cellphone callers

A recent article published in the Wall Street Journal reports that more than half of the U.S. , including 78% of the counties in California , still lack the technology to find cellphone callers in distress. With the explosive growth of wireless technology, more than a third of the 190 million calls placed to 911 each year now come from cellphones.  Even as some of the nation's biggest cellular carriers face a December deadline to upgrade their systems for 911 calls, many emergency-call centers won't be able to receive the data.  And the situation is getting worse with the growing popularity of Internet-based phone services - some of which can't access traditional 911 service.  Public safety officials estimate that it would take $8 billion and at least four more years to modernize the nation's 911 system for wireless calls.

Two technologies are being used to pinpoint wireless callers. GPS can be used to locate the caller if cellphones are equipped with a GPS receiver, and a special network server exists to assist with GPS calculations. That's the system being used by Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS and Nextel.  Cingular and T-Mobile use Uplink Time Difference of Arrival (U-TDOA), a system that works with any phone. This scheme uses measurement units installed in operators' base stations to calculate location using trilateration.

Virtually all of the nation's 6,000 call centers can locate land-line phones, but only 41% of them can locate cellphones, public-safety officials say.  To make matters worse, no federal agency has the authority to drive the local, state and federal governments, as well as dozens of wireless and local-phone companies, toward a solution.

Reference: Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2005, "Cellphone Hangup: When You Dial 911, Can Help Find You?"