Virtual Surge Depot: Catalog of local community/private sector assets for first 72 hours

AD | 11.19.2006 | 07:59:2511305 |

First responders rarely have enough public sector resources or revenue to anticipate all the surge demands of a community during a crisis, particularly when evacuation is required.  Because emergency management professionals typically plan for all hazards, basic public sector capabilities will be stretched without identifying and cataloging additional assets and volunteers from the private sector and community organizaitons that can be drawn upon during the early hours of crisis.  Creating an open-source, on-line virtual surge depot that cataloges assets, capabilities and volunteers from community organizations and local companies will provide emergency managers and responders additional resources that are pre-defined, pre-trained and pre-located, to draw-down as needed during the time of crisis.

A number of national organizations and federal and state agencies are working together to develop virtual surge depots that pre-stage private sector capabilities that can be tapped by governments to respond to crisis. BENS (Business Executives for National Security) has developed regional virtual warehouse software that allow governments to work with corporations to create regional inventories of pre-qualified assets and services organized by ESF and meeting FEMA contracting and specification. Battelle Memorial Institute also has developed a robust virtual depot tool that allows the Marine Corps to catalog, manage and service vast amounts of materiel and manpower in combat theaters.

Working with the Kennedy School of Government, Battelle and BENS, the NCORP Advisory Committee has proposed a local, micro-version that combines the warehouse capablity with the regional asset accessibility model, so that a local surge warehouse would provide the same value to a local community while conforming to the open-standard structure that would allow interoperability with the BENS regional model based on emerging FEMA standards.

The local surge depot model, if adopted by local communities, could link local EMS managers to local community assets, while also bringing them into a regional/national network that is compatible with the FEMA model, creating a vast resource and knowledge database that far exceeds current capability.

Working with Crisis Response Officers (see CROs) in the local community, the EMS managers could request that assets, capabilities and volunteers of a certain type be entered into the virtual surge depot, coded by ESF, geo-located and date-stamped so that local decision makers have an accurate picture of the community sector reserve at any point in time (see Crisis Decsion System).

Additionally, the local virtual depot can identify the location and description of vulnerable or special needs individuals, and link these individuals to pre-identified volunteers to shuttle or assist them to local evacuation or care centers (see Stored Value Card).