* Vendors put their IP services through series of tests designed to simulate worst-case disaster scenarios
With the five-year anniversary of September 11, 2001 upon us, network vendors have been putting their latest IP hardware, software and services to the test in a series of combined military and civilian operations designed to simulate worst-case disaster scenarios.
With the five-year anniversary of September 11, 2001 upon us, network vendors have been putting their latest IP hardware, software and services to the test in a series of combined military and civilian operations designed to simulate worst-case disaster scenarios.
During August, 400 volunteers participated in Strong Angel III in San Diego, a week-long exercise that tested how well first responders could set up communications systems in response to a bird-flu like epidemic accompanied by terrorist attacks that erase electricity, telephone and Internet services.
Strong Angel III sponsors included Bell Canada, Cisco, Microsoft, Google and Sprint Nextel, with many other IT vendors including Akamai, ESRI, IBM, Intel, Intergraph, Qualcomm and Sun participating.
In September, the International Humanitarian Partnership will sponsor a similar exercise in Finland called Triplex 2006. It will involve a simulated natural disaster on the scale of a Category 5 hurricane hitting an urban environment. Microsoft and Google are among the companies participating in this upcoming event.
For vendors, these exercises offer an opportunity to see how well their IP gear will work in real-world disasters. Not only do these exercises help find technology glitches, but they also help iron out emergency response procedures for federal, state and local government agencies.
“Strong Angel III was the third iteration of a civilian/military exercise started in 2000,” says Michael Helfrich, CEO of Blueforce Development, a developer of tactical communications gear who participated in the event. “Our sole goal was to bring to the table varying types of technology to streamline communications such as information sharing and information capture between civilian agencies and military in the face of a disaster situation.”
Strong Angel III was hosted by San Diego State University with financial support from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
With Strong Angel III, network vendors had to create voice and data communications in a situation where power was out and that the cellular networks using CDMA and EVDO technology were not operational.
“We had to have our own power, our own data communications that we could stand up or carry with us and applications built on the fly,” Helfrich says.
Strong Angel III participants set up two networks: one at the main operations headquarters at a nearby fire academy and a mobile outpost on a beach several miles away. The network at the main operations area ran into many problems as participants scrambled to set up wireless hot spots without central coordination. The mobile network, however, was up and running quickly.
“We had an immediate two-mile bubble with satellite service within 20 minutes of rolling up on the beach, and Wi-Fi within two hours,” says Phil Stanhope, vice president of technology and alliances at software manufacturer Adesso Systems and a Strong Angel III participant.
Among the lessons learned for participants is how important it is to have processes in place to say who is in charge of the communications infrastructure in a disaster response scenario. Another important lesson is choosing technologies that work when little bandwidth is available and when bandwidth is unreliable.
“The technologies that were heroes were technologies that were agile, that were adaptive to ups and downs in data communications,” Helfrich says. “Also helpful were application layer technology that allow users to rapidly create, deploy and install applications on equipment that first responders use and technologies that can automatically synchronize data.”
For example, among the technologies that worked well during Strong Angel II was a video streaming technology that ran highly compressed video over low bandwidth links and did it in a point-to-point fashion without a central server.
“Another technology that really shined was RSS,” Stanhope says. “It was good not just for human blogs but for situational data.”
Technologies that didn’t fare as well were collaboration tools that required always-on connections or applications that got backed up when connections flickered off and on.
With Hurricane Katrina fresh in many minds, participation in emergency response drills like these is on the rise. Strong Angel III was an order of magnitude larger than Strong Angel II, which attracted 43 participants.
Participants say these exercises were useful despite the frustrations involved with getting networks up and running without power or commercial infrastructure.
“I think we should do these sorts of exercises annually given the threat environment,” Helfrich says.
