The Homeland Security Blog

The 2010 TCIP Conference was a whirlwind week of catching up with old friends, meeting new ones and advancing life saving emergency response technologies.  The theme for this year’s conference was critical connections and the dual purpose of that theme was not lost on this crowd. The sessions focused on connecting emergency responders with technology while the hallways were filled with practitioners, government officials, and members of industry connecting with each other for a multitude of collaboration opportunities.  It was great to have so many smart focused people at the same event working together to address the needs of the public safety community. The discussions in the sessions overflowed into the hallways – the GIS panel alone could have been a full day session, but alas the presentations and subsequent questions had to fit into an hour and a half.  It was very interesting to see which breakouts drew the biggest crowds: the GIS, open source, and federal resources panels all generated a lot of interest.  Planning for the TCIP 2011 agenda has already begun and we are looking for your ideas on which topics to cover. Let us know and we will be sure to convey them.

by Neil Canfield

The 2010 Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference (TCIP) offered a packed program.  After attending sessions scattered throughout the three day schedule, I walked away from Philadelphia with a notebook full of interesting initiatives.  As Bob mentions below, the initiative that drew the most attention from the attendees at TCIP was Virtual USA (vUSA).  The information sharing possibilities and “critical connections” that vUSA presents the first responder community was definitely the core theme of the conference.  In fact, one of the breakout sessions I attended highlighted how the vUSA model can change and revolutionize the way that technology solutions are utilized by first responders during a critical incident.  While listening to the speakers in the Breaking Down Stovepipes: Using Open Source Tools for Emergency Response Personnel panel, it was exciting to think about the benefits that open technology solutions can provide.  The panel gave an example of how open source tools can quickly and efficiently connect people, organizations, requests, and assistance through highlighting the Haiti 2010 Sahana Disaster Response Portal.  The Sahana Foundation built the site to assist in the response and recovery of the Haiti Earthquake, and as is true of open source solutions, it is specifically targeted to the need.  It was amazing to witness how technology innovations can help to transform the way that information sharing during disaster response is undertaken.  I am looking forward to the initiatives that will be undertaken using open source technology; they may be the next big thing highlighted at TCIP 2011.

by Bob Greenberg

To me this year’s TCIP conference was the best of all the 11 I’ve been involved with – and for one reason – there was a core thematic – Virtual USA (vUSA).  While not every panel addressed it – because there were plenty of other critical issues to talk about – vUSA provided a framework for numerous discussions  in the hallways, restaurants and bars about the dramatic transformations that can take place in the way public safety does their job through the use of Web 2.0 and related technologies.  By demonstrating to the audience in the opening session, followed by a powerful endorsement by White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Scott Deutchman the following day, how these new technologies are already working to transform emergency management and response – it served as an inspiration and guide for the rest of the conference.  As a result the Philadelphia Marriott was “abuzz” with conversations between technologists and practitioners on the application of social media to day-to-day operations;  the use of open source technologies and methods; linking advanced simulation and modeling to the visualization platforms used in vUSA; and even looking to the next phase – what is called the semantic web or  “linkeddata”  which will enable completely seamless – and almost effortless – sharing of information.  In fact, I was involved in one discussion with someone from MIT on this that had my head spinning with the art – and science – of the possible.

It all culminated in the Technology Roundtable that was hosted by Dr. David Boyd from DHS S&T – and the leader of the vUSA initiative – that brought together practitioners, technologists and academics for a “team” meeting on how all this needs to work.  The group – which was packed in like sardines in one of the rooms – had a spirited dialogue on how the private sector needs to work more closely with practitioners up front to avoid the tendency to create technology solutions in search of a problem and instead create solutions to solve practitioners’ problems. One of the core parts of the discussion was the need to create new business models so that the technologies being offered are not too expensive to deploy or don’t hamper interoperability due to their proprietary nature. This was the first in a series of such dialogues that will be coordinated between DHS and the TechNet Crisis Response Working Group. (E-mail KVernon@Technet.org for more info) While at times the dialogue was testy, at the end everyone understood that they were one team and had to act that way for the public good. It left me truly believing that the future is now!

Next week is the Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference, more commonly known as TCIP. There will be lots of interesting sessions including a keynote address from White House CTO Aneesh Chopra . Jim Smalley, an experienced emergency responder and blogger on EmergencyManagement.com blogged about the upcoming conference:

The Power of GIS, Virtual USA, and More!
January 23, 2010

How many conferences have you attended and wished you’d stayed home, doing something more productive, like counting paper clips? Well, that won’t be the case in this conference! And it’s free!!

The event is the 11 th Annual Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness (TCIP) Conference and Expo in Philadelphia, February 2-4, 2010.

For me, the highlight of this year’s conference will be the opening session on DHS’s recently announced Virtual USA initiative (an effort supported by the NAPSG Foundation to advance data interoperability/sharing for emergency responders) and the ‘Power of GIS’ panel session for which the NAPSG Foundation’s Vice-Chair Rand Napoli will serve as the moderator. (Insider tip: Rand is also a member of the Virtual USA GIS Working Group along with NAPSG Foundation Chairman Chief Keith Richter).

The conference includes sessions on prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery and the technological and training tools available for the emergency response community to effectively manage future hazards and incidents. The conference is an opportunity attendees to have directly meet with Federal agencies and members of the public safety community on current emergency response challenges and the brainstorming of potential solutions.

The event is sponsored by the DHS Science & Technology Directorate and co-hosted by the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Defense (DoD). The National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation (NAPSG Foundation) is a partner organization. (Check out my 1/12/10 blog for more information.)

Key speakers include White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison, and Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers.

I’ll be there, too, and look forward to meeting my readers (both of you!). Stop by the NAPSIG Foundation exhibit booth and say hello.

 

What could have been a terrible tragedy was averted by the brave passengers on Northwest flight 253. The Christmas Day terror plot reminded us that no matter how many security measures are present in airports, those intent on harming civilians will adapt and still make it through.

Now that the plot has been exposed, numerous investigations are ongoing…yet others are not.

The U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has authority to conduct investigations on any matter, has decided not to look into the security breach that allowed a terrorist onto a U.S. bound plane, at the direction of its Chairman, Congressman Ed Towns. This has prompted much criticism and repeated calls for an investigation by other members of the committee.

As the “…main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives”, the Oversight Committee is authorized to look into “…any matter with federal policy implications.” If the committee were to hold hearings on this issue it would immediately signal Congress’ recognition of the gravity of the situation and circumvent other committee jurisdiction issues/arguments that typically occur in these types of matters, possibly resulting in a more efficient, far reaching investigation.

Arguments are constantly made that the U.S. Congress is out of touch with regular Americans and its attention has seemingly been diverted to the topic of healthcare reform only. While the activities of the Oversight Committee may be a little known issue outside of Washington, D.C.’s insulated world, Americans across the country should be concerned with the current priorities of their elected officials. It seems to me that a systematic review of what occurred on December 25th should be a priority to Congress and for that reason the Oversight Committee should be taking a look.

Politics aside, what do you think? Should this committee be investigating the terror plot in the first place? Should it be left to other committees with a more specific purview over the issue such as the Committee on Homeland Security? Should Congress stay out of it altogether and let agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Transportation Security Administration handle it? Should this topic be at the top of our elected officials’ priority list?

A January 16, 2010 Washington Post article featured a little known but important movement that promises to greatly enhance the capabilities of the crisis response community, both international and domestic. It highlights the work of several organizations that are devoted to applying geospatial technologies to develop tools to improve situational awareness and provide better analysis to prepare for and response to crises. Among the groups, which tends to overlap in members are the International Network of Crisis Mappers, Crisis Commons, and Random Hacks of Kindness with the latter two growing out of the first ever Crisis bar camp held in Washington, D.C. last summer. Related to these is the Star-Tides program, which conducts technology experiments four times a year at Camp Roberts in northern California.

All of these organizations bring together technologists from the private sector as well as government laboratories with practitioners, government representatives, not for profits and individuals interested in using technology to help in preparing for and responding to crises as well as humanitarian relief – such as the current crisis in Haiti. What’s most important here is that most of the people involved in this movement are volunteers and, in the best tradition of the Internet Generation, are committed to mass collaboration to developing free, open source tools that can be provided to crisis response workers.

Currently much of the efforts of these organizations have been directed towards international crisis response efforts, but programs like the Department of Homeland Security’s Virtual USA are beginning to engage them to help with tools for domestic emergency preparedness and response efforts. An example of this is DHS’s engagement with the TechNet Crisis Response Working Group that was established after meetings with Secretary Janet Napolitano and other DHS officials. One place where this will be discussed in more detail is the Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference (TCIP) sponsored by DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate along with the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice and the Department of Defense’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs – which is being held in Philadelphia Feb 2-4.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening has highlighted the usefulness of Web 2.0 tools as a means of sharing information in times of crisis. Few phone calls have been reaching the Caribbean nation following Tuesday’s quake, however, a flurry of texts, twitters, photos, status updates, and other online communications have been published from social networking sites and Web 2.0 tool users throughout the disaster area.

In the hours following the quake, Web 2.0 tools were instrumental in the collection and aggregation of basic information. With much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins, Twitter updates provided an outlet for citizens to present real-time reports, a handful of videos uploaded to YouTube offered a physical view of the destruction, and pictures on Flickr showed some of the victims of the disaster.

The Google Earth platform has made data available to U.N. organizations and is encouraging users with ground knowledge to update the map of Haiti with disaster response data. One of Google Earth’s imagery partners, GeoEye, has provided post-earthquake satellite imagery of the country. This is a remarkable step forward in making data available in order to create a shared map of the country. What we need now is to systematically integrate these tools into response and recovery efforts, including a process for managing and sifting through the plethora of data to find what’s most relevant to the various groups who need it most.

Let me state from the outset that I’m out of my depth here. Other than being a dedicated and passionate observer and admirer of the intelligence community, I have no background in intelligence matters.  But, after reading countless articles, editorials, blogs and commentaries on the foiled Christmas day bombing incident I feel that I have to raise an issue that I think is worth considering.
 
Most of the media reports and new clips seem to center on the intelligence community’s failure to connect the dots and the need for better detection systems in the airports, which have always met with resistance from the privacy advocates.

While all of that is important and needs to be addressed, I’m going to leave that to other people. Instead, I’m thinking about whether technology can make a difference. Not through better detections systems but by applying Web 2.0 technologies and the principle of “crowdsourcing”  or “collective intelligence” to intelligence gathering and analysis.  In this case though, I’m not talking about the kind of crowdsourcing already being used by the intelligence community through Intellipedia  or A-Space  in which analysts share information and comments with one another to come up with an improved analysis. I’m talking about something more like a system that provides an “automated crowdsourcing” capability. What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s face facts. One of the problems with the intelligence systems in place to identify terrorists is that there’s just too much information.  For example, there’s been a lot made of the fact that Umar Abdulmattulab’s father warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that he was seriously concerned because his son had turned to extremism and was somewhere in Yemen, and that somehow that warning never made it to the top of anyone’s watch list. Frankly, it shouldn’t be too surprising because there are tens of thousands of similarly characterized people on those lists. How is anyone to know which one is more important?

That said, there were plenty of other clues. For example, back in May the British government refused to renew Abdulmattulab’s visa and put him on their own watch list. The National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted a conversation of an al-Qaeda leader discussing a Yemen-based plot involving a Nigerian citizen.  Abdulmattulab paid for his plane ticket in cash. He had only a small carry-on bag. And so on.

But still the intelligence “system” spread among who knows how many agencies, using who knows how many databases, and relying on international cooperation, failed to “connect the dots.” Well there are simply too many dots to connect using the current approach. Maybe we need to develop a technical approach that can somehow connect the dots for the analysts.  Perhaps I’m naïve, but it doesn’t seem too hard to do, despite all the existing impediments to intelligence sharing.
 
Let me state here that I know that true analysis cannot be automated and requires the human “minds eye.”  What I’m suggesting is that perhaps we can do more to help that analyst by using technology to connect dots – where it can. What about this?

1. Develop the analytical components:  The first step would be to break down the analytical framework into components. What are those identifiable elements that an analyst uses to determine if someone might constitute a true threat or be related to a true threat? For example, Abdulmattulab’s father’s warning is one piece of the puzzle. But equally as important to this analysis was the NSA intercept. It is important to work out all the relational components. I know this won’t be easy – in fact this, along with step two, are probably the most difficult tasks. It will have to involve participation by analysts from multiple intelligence agencies and then be vetted by multiple agencies.  And it will probably take some time to accomplish, but I think it can be done. These are smart, dedicated people who know their business. If they devote the time, they can do it.
2. Develop a value for the components: The next step would be to attach weights to each of those components. In other words, tag each component with a value.   In addition to weighting individual components, develop weights that would serve as “tipping points” to alert the appropriate people that the individual in question needs to be looked at much more closely. For example, the father’s warning might receive one value and the NSA intercept another. Independently they might not point to Abdulmattulab as a threat – but taken together, they become more important.  Note that I said “tipping points” – plural. There is not going to be one tipping point, but multiple points that should generate an alert.  Again, this is not an easy task and is something that will have to involve multiple people and agencies, but I think it can be done. 
3. Develop and implement an intelligence alert system: Finally, once those elements are determined, develop and pilot a “link analysis” type of system that will reach across all of the existing databases – classified or open – to aggregate and analyze  the data that might be related to a specific person or specific piece of intelligence.  With the technology that exists today, this shouldn’t be difficult to do despite the fact this will need to be a highly secured system. The harder part will be to develop the policies and procedures among all the relevant agencies to allow the system to reach into each agency’s database. I would think that the fact that a lot of this is supposed to be brought together at the National Counterterrorism Center should make this easier, but having no real knowledge about that system, I can’t state that for certain. In addition to domestic systems, there will have to be agreements hammered out with our international partners to enable this kind of information to be shared.

There you have it – that’s my idea.  Not being part of the intelligence community, I don’t know how much merit there is to it. But I thought I’d throw it out there for smarter and more experienced people to talk about.

It’s been a big week for Virtual USA.  First, the White House announced vUSA  as part of Obama’s Open Government Directive and then Secretary Napolitano followed that up with a press release  officially launching the vUSA initiative. Try Googling “Virtual USA,” and you will see a lot of new hits.

The White House’s Open Government Directive focuses on transparency, participation, and collaboration in government, which is why vUSA was identified as a lead example for the nation. Virtual USA relies on collaboration among local agencies, neighboring jurisdictions, states, regions, and citizens and the participation of each of those groups and many more.

One of the main focuses of the Obama administration is citizen participation and it looks like vUSA may be able to embrace that as the initiative unfolds. One of the great things about Virginia’s VIPER system, which has been one of the partners for a vUSA pilot, is that it is open to the public – hopefully they are leading the way to a public side of vUSA.

Also worth a read is the White House’s report: Open Government: A Progress Report to the American People.

Late last Wednesday the Senate confirmed Tara O’Toole as the new Under Secretary for the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security. Her nomination had been held up for what seemed like forever since she was nominated in May. That is right – ten months since Obama took office!

Now that Dr. O’Toole is confirmed, I would recommend going back and re-reading her nomination hearing testimony. It will be very interesting to see if she is able to achieve her goals within the current S&T structure or if she will have to reorganize the Directorate to establish a new way of thinking that promotes the type of innovative research she is prioritizing.

The Southeast Regional Operation Platform Pilot’s  capstone demonstration was a success! In fact, success is probably an understatement; the excitement surrounding Virtual USA since Wednesday’s demonstration has not only grown but has gone viral as well.

The pilot demonstration was the first major milestone for Virtual USA  (vUSA). During the event, six states and FEMA shared relevant emergency information using disparate visualization tools.  The audience for the demonstration included over one hundred representatives from around the federal government including the White House, DHS and Congress. In addition, there were dozens of people viewing the demonstration remotely including other state representatives from the Pacific Northwest and New England, who are in process of creating their own pilots. 

Charles Werner , the Fire Chief from Charlottesville, Virginia and well known national public safety leader, wasn’t able to attend but sent a letter of support .  A portion of that letter reads:

“The ROPP demonstration does two very powerful things.  First it demonstrates the power of geospatial data for public safety and establishes the foundation on which to build an effective and collaborative national public safety GIS strategy.  Second, this initiative advances public safety information-intelligence sharing and situational awareness in ways that up until now have been only a dream.”

During the demonstration several of the federal officials in attendance began to discuss how the different agencies and offices could support the vUSA initiative and how to integrate several existing projects into the vUSA framework. The demonstration and surrounding discussions serve as important steps forward in the development of a nationwide model for real-time, seamless information sharing during emergencies and day-to-day operations.

A definite buzz has been created around vUSA as a result of the event.  Look for more official press/info in the days and weeks to come.

This Wednesday, November 4, DHS S&T and seven states are demonstrating the work they have done over the past nine months to address the technical and governance issues associated with sharing information across state boundaries as part of the Regional Operations Platform Pilot (ROPP). The ROPP demonstration is an important milestone for the Virtual USA (vUSA) initiative which is developing a national model for seamless information sharing in real time that supports preparedness activities.

Stay tuned for a recap of how the demonstration went.