ReadyCommunities Partnership: Community Level Pilot Demonstrations

On January 10, 2007, key stakeholders recommended formation of the ReadyCommunities Partnership to strengthen community-level readiness during the first hours after disaster or attack.  Delegates to the National Congress for Secure Communities will help determine which community preparedness and response challenges should be addressed first, then help develop templates for best practices which might be used in the pilots, facilitated by tools such as the Crisis Response Officer, Virtual Surge Depot and the Essential Public Network.

Delegates will also help summarize some of the barriers to preparedness, and make recommendations for legislation to remove those barriers as ways to improve essential cooperation between stakeholders for optimal community response capability.

Each community participating in the pilots will work with private and community sector organizations to demonstrate how current and available commercial capabilities and technology can help meet the challenges to community-level readiness.  Partners will include industry leaders such as Siemens, Cisco, Computer Associates, IBM, ESRI and others who will participate or advise each of the communities on how to begin to test and demonstrate at least one best practice per pilot.

Community partners in 2007-2008 include Charleston /SC, Galveston /TX, Oakland County/MI, Hamilton County/IN, Buffalo /NY, Appalachia region, KY.