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Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) Centre for Security Sciences (CSS) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)

Damage assessment information was shared between the U.S. and Canadian participants during the CAUSE-ERE using geo-tagged images of damage on web-based maps (far left of picture). The Live Wall (center of picture) allowed for interactive exchange of information through a shared desktop and video interface.

The first annual Enterprise Resilience Experiment (ERE) was conducted as a collaborative effort between the Canada and U.S. on June 21, 2011.  The Canada-U.S. Experiment ERE (CAUSE-ERE) was the first attempt to develop an approach to test and evaluate new technologies within an emergency management scenario.  The CAUSE-ERE was based on a massive Cascadian earthquake that would disrupt the west coast of North America from Oregon through Vancouver, British Columbia. 

From the U.S., the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) organized the participation of over 30 emergency management professionals from local, state and federal agencies at their facilities in Seattle, Washington. 

From Canada, this activity was in good alignment with Canada’s recently published “Communications Interoperability Strategy and Action Plan for Canada” (Jan 2011), which may be found at: http://www.citig.ca/Data/Sites/1/newsfiles/nsci-ap-eng.pdf.

As well as hands on exposure of local technologies and integrations to Canadian and U.S. emergency management agencies, the experiment also delivered the first international experimental exchange of incident related alert messages between three U.S. systems and two Canadian systems. The project also developed important lessons learned for adoption and resilience of technologies, cross boarder collaboration, interoperability of existing tools and guidance for future research and development.  The emergency managers participating had significant input on the value and application of the technologies, several of which they are interested in piloting in their operations. 

The experiment involved actors in Emergency Management BC (EMBC), the Cities of Vancouver and Richmond, both the PNNL labs and Washington EMD in the United States. The experiment was aimed at exploring the technology and collaboration opportunities between municipal, provincial (or state and local) and international jurisdictions through the development of a scenario based on a major earthquake in the Cascadian subduction zone off the coast of Oregon. From DRDC, a documentary around the process is being developed and covers the participation of a number of other organizations that provided support and solutions for the experiment, namely:  Natural Resources Canada, ESRI Canada, GeoBC, Emergeo, Simon Fraser University (SFU), MyStateUSA and Planetworks Consulting.

A key focus was also interoperation with the U.S. and U.S. technologies included MyStateUSA, Integrated Public Alerting and Warning System (IPAWS) and SAMapper through the MASAS hub.  The experiment was conducted as a series of vignettes with dialogue between participating agencies relating to the master earthquake scenario and supported by the use of the various technologies. The City of Richmond Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) acted out their activation and assessment of situation using tools including BCeMap and Fusion Point, and conducted a situation report and resource request with the Provincial EOC. The request was made for communications support and deployment of the AMECom truck was part of this segment.  

SFU students played the role of citizens creating reports from the street of the collapse of an arterial viaduct, using Ushahidi. The City of Vancouver 311 team then analyzed these reports, creating official records in the ETeam system for assessment by the City of Vancouver EOC with mapping capabilities in BCeMap used to support situation reports and resource requests with the Provincial EOC. The Provincial EOC used BCeMap and MASAS to support situation updates with the PNNL Lab (acting as a Seattle EOC) with as feed from a U.S. technology (SAMapper) to show the state of highways in the immediate vicinity of Seattle, a viable corridor for the movement of Canadian resources from the interior.  A simulated dialogue with Washington State Emergency Management Department (EMD) was also conduced around highway incidents near the border, with the historical first of a feed to and from MyStateUSA through the FEMA IPAWS system and MASAS to BCeMap.

The technologies included from Canada included:

• BCeMAP: An advanced browser based mapping and aggregation system used for Situational Awareness in BC and developed by ESRI Canada.
• MASAS: Multi Agency Situational Awareness System - a solution for sharing authoritative location-based situational awareness information, in near real time, within Canada's emergency management community and across the border.
• CAP/ATOM Message Generator: a message generation tool that can simulation the generation of multiple messages from many sources to feed the MASAS hub and consuming systems.     
• Emergeo mapping and Fusion Point: Crisis information management system providing simple logging and reporting, real-time data fusion, and geospatial information integration.   
• AMECom: Advanced Mobile Emergency Communications Vehicle – A specialized vehicle capable of rapidly deploying advanced communications throughout regions of British Columbia and providing community communications and power support and cross-agency communication interoperation
• ETeam: The Provincial Incident Management system developed by NC4.
• Ushahidi: Crowd sourcing tool for gathering public information on major incidents.
• Hazus-MH: The FEMA methodology and tool set that contains models for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes and currently being Canadianized by Natural Resources Canada.

The technologies included from the U.S. included:

• Situational Assessment Mapper: takes pictures from a handheld device, geo-tags information, adds metadata and comments, saves information to a database, and displays on a web-based map
• Live Wall: allows communication between separate groups using an interactive video, audio, and a shared desktop environment
• Real Time Evaluation Planning Model (RTEPM): models vehicle evacuation routes
• Scalable Reasoning System (SRS) Social Networking Analysis: allows trending of social media information to be easily summaries and situational awareness to be enhanced
• Mobile Alerting: a research tool being used for building evacuation planning but was used in this case to support search and rescue
• Mobile Epiphany: a commercial capability quickly tailored for shelter induction and to support family re-unification after a disaster