• articles
• News
• speeches
• Stephenson Strategies
• top blog posts
• W. David Stephenson bio

The nominations are in; the 3 judges (me, myself, and the chairman: I) have voted; and here they are, the winners of the 2008 Homies for most promising homeland security technologies for the year to come.

As in past years, I used the same criteria to evaluate the possible winners: I still think they’re the best ones in my particular niche, which deals particularly with empowering the general public to play a substantive role in terrorism and disaster preparation and response:

• also having day-in-day-out applications so that they will both be familiar in an emergency (i.e., not requiring users to have to learn something new when they’re already stressed) and will have economic and/or social benefits so their purchase and deployment are more easily justified. Those that use commercial applications and devices benefit from a virtuous circle, in which new features and capacity in the devices sparks new applications to exploit those improvements — far more rapidly than would be the case in government-only communication systems and devices.
• decentralized, so they are less likely to be rendered inoperative by attacks on a centralized switching facility, etc.
• in the hands of the general public, so they leverage technology that is already in use (and, given the inevitable cost and procurement limits of government technology, more current) and that people are likely to have with them when disaster strikes, so they can get up-to-the minute information.
• location-based, so that we can get away from lowest-common denominator evacuation and response plans that are likely to cause their own problems such as traffic jams.
• empower the public, because authorities may themselves be incapacitated and our fate will be in our own hands, and because we may be more likely to listen to trusted friends and/or neighbors than distant authorities.
• two-way, so that the general public and/or responders who may be the first to come upon an emerging problem can feed information back to authorities.
• redundant, because various technologies have distinctive strengths and liabilities that may render them unusable, or, make them crucial fall-back options.
• allow dissemination of information in advance so they can be quickly activated and/or customized in an emergency (instead of requiring massive data-dumps in the midst of a crisis).
• IP based, because packet-based information will require less bandwidth in a situation where conserving it is crucial.
• foster collaboration, because multiple agencies and jurisdictions may be involved and will need to share information from a wide range of sources on a real-time basis.

And now — in no particular order, are this year’s winners.

1. Web 2.0 technologies.
Oops, there actually is a first-place winner: Web 2.0 devices and applications — they’re why I changed this blog’s name.IMHO, Web 2.0 technologies in general, from wikis as the ideal tool for real-time disaster response plans to data visualizations, my current obsession, as the way to make everything from policy options to program redundancies comprehensible, or even discern patterns in terrorist, must be the key to future communication strategies in this field because they:

*are web-based, and therefore will still function even if participants don’t have access to desktop computers
*are inherently collaborative, fostering the kind of emergent behavior that can be critical in emergencies
*can provide vital real-time, location-based situational awareness in emergencies (using Google mashups, etc.)

We’re only begun to scratch the surface of Web 2.0’s potential for this and ever other enterprise need.

2. UStream
which allows real-time streaming of videos, which could be invaluable for providing situational awareness in disasters. It’s already been used in his regard to cover the Virginia Tech tragedy, an earthquake in Mexico, and the Souther California wildfires.

3. cameraphones:
This relates to No. 2. Remember that cameraphone video that played incessantly after the Virginia Tech shootings? Imagine if people could attach pictures and/or videos to their 911 reports to authorities. That’s exactly what NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposes. When that’s a reality, look for other municipalities to quickly follow suit.

4. Square Loop
As I’ve mentioned before, Square Loop’s inclusion demands my conflict-of-interest seal, because I have a working relationship with them, but it ranks high on my list nonetheless, because it’s the only application I know of that automatically sends emergency alerts to your cellphone just because you’re in the affected area at the time — it doesn’t require 20th-century approaches such as signing up for email alerts or reverse-911 calls that so many panicked municipalities and colleges got hoodwinked into signing up for after Va. Tech.

5. Twitter
I ate some humble pie about Twitter, which I originally dismissed as the means for obsessive navel gazing by teens. A lot of the content is still inane, but it’s increasingly used by smart organizations such as the Red Cross for emergency reporting. Mea culpa!

6. Fixed-mobile convergence
Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) is yet another commercial technology advance on the horizon that can double as a critical tool for emergency communications.

As the name implies, FMC describes unified fixed and mobile communications, with the potential to be able to reach employees and others through a single phone number no matter whether they’re at their desks or on the road.

7. Cheap, walkie-talkie like devices for military
As I’ve written before, I think that it’s critical that devices and applications DARPA is developing for military use also be adapted for homeland security use (in part because of Stephenson’s Rules of Homeland Security #1:

find a solution to your problem by thinking of someone who shares the same problem, but to the nth degree, because their pain has probably motivated them to find an answer.

DARPA’s Project Wireless Adaptive Network Development is a great example of my argument that we need strategies that encourage creation of flexible, ad hoc networks when the gold-plated stuff fails. Even better, the key to this kind of peer-to-peer self-forming network (in addition to new software algorithms, is $500 walkie-talkie-sized radios that can span 4 independent channels, and “will explit commercial, rather than custom, radio components.”

8. video sharing
It’s in its infancy, but I suspect that real-time video-sharing for video phones is going to be a great tool for networked homeland security.

Aylus Networks has developed a platform that will allow mobile users to share videos at the same time as they talk — think about how that could be used if you or I happened to be at the scene of some sort of terrorist attack or disaster and the cops could ask us to pan the phone so they could get better information.

9. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
OLPC is the great under-$200 (nay-sayers poo-poo it because it hasn’t met the $100 per target — excuuuuse me!) laptop that Nick Negroponte and team developed for use by school kids in developing nations.

It seems to me that this laptop, especially when powered by PV cells, could be the ultimate in disaster communication tools, because it creates an instant mesh network and is the picture of simplicity.

10. Command Post of the Future
Last but not least, here’s another DARPA project that should be used at home as well. It would let “… soldiers in different locations collaborate in real time without traveling through dangerous areas to meet in the same physical space.” Ain’t that what we’d need in disasters as well?

That’s my take on the most promising homeland security technologies for the next year. The much-coveted plaques and a six-pack of Duff Beer will be presented to the winners at a ceremony at Moe’s Tavern presided over by none other than the October 1990 Toxic Waste Handler of the Month at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.

Duh!

Technorati tags: homeland security UStream War on Terror homeland security technology antiterrorism technology data visualization crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior networked homeland security government IT collaboration mesh network location-based services geo-spatial web web 2.0 homeland security 2.0 disaster management 2.0 disaster management Twitter OLPCAylus Networks DARPA disaster planning disaster planning 2.0 mesh