Transform public into disaster response partners
Reprinted from the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, Feb. 26, 2007
Observations while marooned on I-78:
transform the public into full partners in disaster response
by W. David Stephenson
Governor Rendell said last week’s I-78 fiasco included a “total breakdown in communications.” As one of those stuck in it, I couldn’t agree more.
The good news is that the state, with a common-sense plan to capitalize on the communication devices most of us had with us Wednesday — including cellphones, laptop computers and GPS devices — can either avoid similar problems in the future, or at least minimize them.
I say that because I was returning to Boston from briefing federal officials and the Red Cross on just such a networked homeland security strategy, which could transform the public into full partners in disaster preparation and response.
One state program, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s Terrorism Awareness and Protection project, already gets it. It does a superb job of capitalizing on the web’s interactivity to educate people on what activities might signal a terror attack in the making and how to report them (and, equally, important, sensitizing us to the benign religious and cultural practices of Muslims and others).
Now it’s time for PennDOT and the State Police to capitalize on ways you and I can play a constructive role in fighting terror — and blizzards — through communication devices and applications we use daily. To cite only a few examples:
- New York City residents will soon be able to attach a cameraphone picture or video when filing a 911 complaint. Explaining Mayor Bloomberg’s decision, an aide referred to YouTube’s popularity, saying, “this is the way the world is now working, so it’s just time to bring 911 .. into cyberspace.” Believe me, lots of us could have provided PennDOT with the “situational awareness” they would have needed via cameraphone pictures. Because the phones now include GPS, officials could have pieced together detailed mile-by mile photo maps — “mashed up” with Google Maps, of precisely where the worst conditions were.
- Contra Costa County, CA is implementing a technology called GeoCast, developed by the MIT spinoff MITRE, and commercialized by Square Loop, as part of its best-in-the-nation multi-mode, all-hazard public alerting system. With it, the State Police could have sent SMS text messages that only drivers caught in the tie-up would have received, telling what the situation was — and asking them to send the aforementioned cameraphone pictures to PennDOT.
- Dash Express, a new GPS system for sale this summer, would have actually warned authorities automatically. Each unit is web-enabled, and if several subscribers had all had the same experience of grinding to a halt, the units would have automatically relayed that back to the company’s computers. Under ordinary conditions, an algorithm would merge data from the cars with historical information about I-78, and recommended an alternative route. In this case, it could also have let officials know much earlier that traffic was at a standstill.
- Believe it or not, we could have formed our own wireless network to share information during the jam! An Illinois activist group, CUWiN, created free, downloadable software allowing instantaneous creation of a self-forming, self-healing community wireless network. That “community” could even be a 50-mile long, 4-lane wide one formed involuntarily by thousands of people stuck on I-78. If others’ laptops (bear in mind many truckers now carry laptops) were like mine and all had the CUWiN software installed, we could have communicated the entire length of the traffic jam without any official involvement at all!
And that brings me to my final point: in a crisis, you and I will do the natural thing, using our cell phones and any other devices we have available to network with our family and friends, to report we’re safe, and try to figure out what to do. In the future, PennDOT and the State Police can either embrace the networked homeland security approach and make us partners in response — or we’ll simply ignore them and take matters into our own hands. If anything good comes out of last week’s mess, it might be the birth of “government in our own hands.”
