GPS Tracking, ROI and Mobile Command Centers

Going a little off the GPS tracking beaten path here … but you know me by now, GPS and ROI from using GPS tracking won’t be far away.  Especially since it’s almost time for the US hurricane season to kick off this is a very appropriate post for a couple of my other interests … emergency services and disaster recovery/mitigation.

This post is aimed mainly at a lot of my municipal, county, state disaster response readers.  You can sit on your hands and wait for the “Brownies” of FEMA to provide you after the fact” assistance of some sort or you can take action now to prepare yourself … in many cases with unclaimed FEMA disaster preparedness and Homeland Security funding:

How do you dispatch emergency calls if your 911 center isn’t available?  (my emphasis) That’s a very real question for Dixie County Emergency Services. Located just 18 miles from Florida’s Gulf Coast, the organization knows the community’s safety depends on being prepared to continue operations under any circumstances.
“There have been several major Gulf hurricanes, and we’ve seen the devastation that can result,” said Mike Gantt, 911 division chief for Dixie County Emergency Services. “Most of the communities hit by Hurricane Katrina were left with nothing. We wanted to make certain we had the ability to go back to work as a 911 center for the county, even if the building was inaccessible.”
Dixie County can now take its 911 center on the road and dispatch calls from further inland using a new integrated solution from Avaya and TCI. … read the full mobile command center story here:

Not too many people took note of the fact that during the World Trade Center terrorist attack in 2001, New York City, who deserves a lot of credit for trying to be ready for an emergency almost, unwittingly, exacerbated the disaster by an order of magnitude or more.  Mayor Guliani and many key disaster response leaders came within a hairsbreadth of being trapped inside the state-of-the-art NYC disaster preparedness center which turned out to be an ‘ancillary” casualty of the attack … World Trade Center Building 7.

 

Your organization needs a disaster response center and/or command post.  What it does not need from my 38 years in the business perspective, is that center to be stood up in any fixed location.  It is impossible to tell where and what disaster you must respond to.  And as the New York experience sadly proved, the most effectively managed and generously funded center may fall victim to the very disaster it hopes to mitigate.

Put you emergency essential command center inside a vehicle … a trailer will do, and park it near one of your existing fixed locations … say Police headquarters, the City Hall, etc.  Equip it with a subset of what your agencies are using every day and … believe me, this part is essential … man it an train the staff to use it.  If you can’t work the mobile equipment into day-to-day operations, then transfer command to the mobile once a month … using a different location each time.  use GPS tracking, of course to locate the center and locate the first responders that the center will control.  This will pay off big time, really big time when a contingency occurs … it’s not if, it is when … and if you plan carefully you can fund most of the effort with existing government grant money.  It’s what you got elected/get paid to do, so live up to the code of conduct of your job.

And business owners?  Did you think this doesn’t apply to you?  (pick a slow day and ask your IT chief/CIO to turn off your business network … and then instruct him/her to “play dead” and not answer phone calls, emails or texts).  Will your company lose millions or do you have a plan, including a mobile force or a geographically separate back up center in place?

As always, I welcome comments, disagreement is encouraged, and you can also email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.