Hacking Coastal Preparedness
Until today, millions living on the United States’ coasts have relied on antiquated means of communication and information regarding emergency preparedness, warning, response and recovery. For preparedness, citizens have been responsible for finding guidance for preparing for a disaster online. Forced to search Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other websites for information on how to shelter, what the necessary supplies are, creating family preparedness plans, and what to do in the event the emergency has read all of the plans and ruins them all. This is a lot of work that most Americans don’t even know where to start. So, what’s the alternative? Doing nothing, not being prepared, and expecting the government to meet all needs in a disaster — despite no longer having identification, prescription information, or records of ownership because they were all destroyed with the house.
For emergency warnings and situation updates after an emergency, Americans are notified via weather radios (what are those again?), television (they’ll interrupt the Kardashians right?), and cell phone broadcasts (that are so annoying most of us have silenced them, am I right?). These forms of notification are better than historical options, however they’re still not enough. These warning systems will give an initial warning, but they don’t do a very good job keeping us updated on the recovery process, or tell us when it’s safe to enter our homes again. These systems also can’t tell us if our loved ones made it out safely, including our four-legged family members. Furthermore, alarm fatigue, lack of public trust, politics, technical limitations, and human error have all contributed to the inability of these technologies to achieve their intended potential. This system is ripe for disruption. Team GETS has hacked each phase of this system, creating elegant solutions to some of FEMAs hardest problems.
Team GETS Solution
Imagine a future where while going about your daily routine you receive an alert on your cell phone, and an audible alert within your residence. Knowing the residence alert only sounds for imminent threats, you take notice. Whether it be a closing hurricane, tremors just before an earthquake, or a fast moving forest fire, when you hear the alert you know it’s time to act now. The system is alerting you because thousands of well placed sensors have determined you need to activate your emergency response procedures for either evacuation or sheltering in place. In addition to notifying you, this system also has mechanisms to keep disaster response groups updated too. For those that have survived a disaster, the initial response is usually the easiest step. Waiting for news of your loved ones, your home, and your community is much harder. The Team GETS solution will move emergency response and recovery into the 22nd Century.
The Team GETS concept home has capitalized on the idea of a smart home and turned it into a safely intelligent home. What if your home was able to tell you when a disaster was coming and what your best course of action would be? This can be possible by combining annunciating in-home fire alarms with movement monitoring technology. The sensors and announcement panels will allow early warning systems to deliver warning messages, basic response advice, and communicate with first responders deployed to help rescue survivors. Imagine how much faster people can be saved if the rescue teams know exactly which home still have people in them? Technology exists today to monitor the movements of the mobility limited? One of these technologies, called BLUESOUND, created by Ghassem Mokhtari, et al. uses a combination of infrared, ultrasound, and bluetooth technology to ambiantly monitor the movement of people in the home. Working hand-in-hand with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), secure fire monitoring devices with technology similar to BLUESOUND that can be installed to safely and securely connect your home to the F-ARPA Net.
What is the F-ARPA Net? F-ARPA Net is the network that will connect safely intelligent homes to the local Emergency Management Agency and local Emergency Dispatch Center(s). Using secure internet connections via local internet service provider, cellular phone, external weather monitoring transmitter (discussed later) or satellite, depending on what’s already available and functional in the home, F-ARPA Net will only connect to homes when an emergency is imminent. During the pre-disaster, disaster response, and life-safety recovery phase F-ARPA Net will be used to communicate with affected citizens and coordinate citizen rescues. But what happens when there is no disaster present? The simple answer is nothing, most of the time. The only time F-ARPA Net will be used outside a disaster is when testing the system to verify that it’s working. Much like fire, tornado, and other drills that we participate in annually, it is necessary to verify the system works in a disaster, rather than hoping for the best while waiting for a disaster to strike. F-ARPA Net is dedicated to preparing, protecting, and when necessary, saving our citizens.
However, Team GETS has not limited emergency notification, communication, and situational awareness to inside the home. In addition to the safety intelligent home technology, mounted on the exterior of every coastal structure and government building are two items providing active live information feeding into your local Emergency Operations Center (EOC), your local National Weather Service (NWS) Office, and also your local Emergency Dispatch Center(s). This information not only allows key prediction and response personnel to direct evacuations and sheltering, but provides immediate information for directing the right recovery resources to the right locations. Each identified structure has a small weather station providing vital information about wind, seismic activity, barometric pressure, etc. which is better than current doppler radar and scattered remote monitoring stations used today. To keep the system online during an event where power is out, a 2-week battery backup and wireless transmitter allow for maintained transmission to local prediction and response personnel.
The second system affixed to each structure is a reinforced box containing a drone. Each drone will be equipped with a camera, 2-way radio, and a global positioning system (GPS). The drones are programmed to immediately perform a coordinated grid-scan of the affected area immediately following a disaster. The purpose of the scan is to:
- Scan for survivors
- Survey initial damage to report to the EOC, local Emergency Dispatch Centers, FEMA, and later insurance companies
- Survey critical infrastructure
- Determine most-functional routes for first responders to take to reach survivors
- Help with identifying appropriate response resource warehousing and staging locations.
Once the scans are complete the drone will return to any survivors to assist with initial triage and identification so appropriate rescue resources can be sent. Additionally, the drone’s radio will connect to the local Emergency Dispatch Center whose dispatchers are trained in dispatch first-aid that could be used to remotely assist survivors until further help arrives. When the drone’s power is low it will return to its base to charge. Each drone installation will include a battery pack that can provide up to 2-weeks of additional power. The drones will also capitalize on the weather station’s antennas to further their reception and range compared to traditional technology today.
