Modeling the Use of an Airborne Platform for Cellular Communications Following Disruptions

In the wake of a disaster, infrastructure can be severely damaged, hampering telecommunications. An Airborne Communications Network (ACN) allows for rapid and accurate information exchange that is essential for the disaster response period. Access to information for survivors is the start of returning to self-sufficiency, regaining dignity, and maintaining hope. Real-world testing has proven that such a system can be built, leading to possible future expansion of features and functionality of an emergency communications system. Currently, there are no airborne civilian communications systems designed to meet the demands of the public following a natural disaster. A system allowing even a limited amount of communications post-disaster is a great improvement on the current situation, where telecommunications are frequently not available. It is technically feasible to use an airborne, wireless, cellular system quickly deployable to disaster areas and configured to restore some of the functions of damaged terrestrial telecommunications networks. The system requirements were presented, leading to the next stage of the planned research, where a range of possible solutions were examined. The best solution was selected based on the earlier, predefined criteria. The system was modeled, and a test ii system built. The system was tested and redesigned when necessary, to meet the requirements. The research has shown how the combination of technology, especially the recent miniaturizations and move to open source software for cellular network components can allow sophisticated cellular networks to be implemented. The ACN system proposed could enable connectivity and reduce the communications problems that were experienced following Hurricane Sandy and Katrina. Experience with both natural and man-made disasters highlights the fact that communications are useful only to the extent that they are accessible and useable by the population

Warrnambool exchange fire: consumer and social impact analysis

How can governments, communities, businesses and individuals prepare for a total communications blackout in the 21st century? Overview This report presents the findings of a research project which assessed the social impact of the Warrnambool exchange fire. The fire occurred on November 22, 2012 and caused a telecommunications outage that lasted for about 20 days. The outage affected about 100,000 people in South West Victoria, a region of Australia covering approximately 67,340 square kilometers. The social impact of the fire was researched by conducting focus groups, by gathering quantitative and qualitative data, and interviewing people affected. The research project findings call for an understanding of the need for government, communities, business and individuals to be prepared for future “extreme events” which result in telecommunications network failures.   This research was supported by a grant from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network

Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster

Each year, crowd disasters happen in different areas of the world. How and why do such disasters happen? Are the fatalities caused by relentless behavior of people or a psychological state of panic that makes the crowd 'go mad'? Or are they a tragic consequence of a breakdown of coordination? These and other questions are addressed, based on a qualitative analysis of publicly available videos and materials, which document the planning and organization of the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany, and the crowd disaster on July 24, 2010. Our analysis reveals a number of misunderstandings that have widely spread. We also provide a new perspective on concepts such as 'intentional pushing', 'mass panic', 'stampede', and 'crowd crushs'. The focus of our analysis is on the contributing causal factors and their mutual interdependencies, not on legal issues or the judgment of personal or institutional responsibilities. Video recordings show that, in Duisburg, people stumbled and piled up due to a 'domino effect', resulting from a phenomenon called 'crowd turbulence' or 'crowd quake'. Crowd quakes are a typical reason for crowd disasters, to be distinguished from crowd disasters resulting from 'panic stampedes' or 'crowd crushes'. In Duisburg, crowd turbulence was the consequence of amplifying feedback and cascading effects, which are typical for systemic instabilities. Accordingly, things can go terribly wrong in spite of no bad intentions from anyone. Comparing the incident in Duisburg with others, we give recommendations to help prevent future crowd disasters. In particular, we introduce a new scale to assess the criticality of conditions in the crowd. This may allow preventative measures to be taken earlier on. Furthermore, we discuss the merits and limitations of citizen science for public investigation, considering that today, almost every event is recorded and reflected in the World Wide Web.Comment: For a collection of links to complementary video materials see http://loveparadevideos.heroku.com/ For related work see http://www.soms.ethz.c

میزان آمادگی بیمارستان های دانشگاه علوم پزشکی ایران در برابر سوانح از بعد ارتباطات

مقدمه: برقراری ارتباط و اطلاع‌رسانی به ارگان‌ها و مردم یکی از اصول اولیه در برنامه‌ریزی بحران می‌باشد. نقص در سیستم‌های ارتباطی به خصوص در مراکز درمانی که در اثر بحران به وجود می‌آید، کمبود امکانات در رابطه با تجهیزات و تکنولوژی‌های ارتباطی، ذخیره ناکافی سیستم‌های ارتباطی که باعث ناهماهنگی عملکرد بین ارگان‌ها می‌گردد، روی یافته‌های بحران تأثیر بسزایی دارد و عوارض آن را چندین برابر می‌نماید. هدف از این مطالعه بررسی میزان آمادگی بیمارستان‌های آموزشی دانشگاه علوم پزشکی ایران از نظر برقراری ارتباطات به هنگام بروز سوانح می‌باشد. روش‌ها: مطالعه حاضر از نوع میدانی است و جامعه آماری، شامل بیمارستان‌های آموزشی دانشگاه علوم‌پزشکی ایران می‌باشد. در این پژوهش، ابزار گردآوری داده‌ها، چک لیست بود که شامل 6 سؤال می‌باشد که از طریق مشاهده و مصاحبه با افراد مختلف بر حسب مورد (مدیر بیمارستان، مدیر پرستاری، دبیر کمیته حوادث غیرمترقبه و...) تکمیل گردید و به منظور بررسی داده‌ها از آماره‌های توصيفي نظير فراواني، نسبت و متوسط درصد استفاده گردید. یافته‌ها: در بیمارستان‌های مورد بررسی، بیمارستان هاشمی‌نژاد با متوسط درصد 2/63 و بیمارستان فیروزگر با متوسط درصد 6/36 به ترتیب بیشترین و کمترین متوسط درصد امتیاز را در برنامه‌ریزی از بعد ارتباطات کسب نمودند. نتیجه‌گیری: در بیمارستان‌ها باید تمام روش‌های ممکن برقراری ارتباطات در برنامه سوانح گنجانده شود تا انعطاف‌پذیری لازم در زمینه پشتیبانی وسایل و سرویس‌های حیاتی در زمان بحران تأمین شود. یافته‌ها بیانگر آن است که بیمارستان‌های مورد پژوهش از همه این روش‌ها برخوردارنیستند و در پاسخگویی لازم در مقابله با سوانح، اثربخش نخواهند بود

Implementation and Development of Vehicle Tracking and Immobilization Technologies

Since the mid-1980s, limited use has been made of vehicle tracking using satellite communications to mitigate the security and safety risks created by the highway transportation of certain types of hazardous materials. However, vehicle-tracking technology applied to safety and security is increasingly being researched and piloted, and it has been the subject of several government reports and legislative mandates. At the same time, the motor carrier industry has been investing in and implementing vehicle tracking, for a number of reasons, particularly the increase in efficiency achieved through better management of both personnel (drivers) and assets (trucks or, as they are known, tractors; cargo loads; and trailers). While vehicle tracking and immobilization technologies can play a significant role in preventing truck-borne hazardous materials from being used as weapons against key targets, they are not a & ”silver bullet.” However, the experience of DTTS and the FMCSA and TSA pilot projects indicates that when these technologies are combined with other security measures, and when the information they provide is used in conjunction with information supplied outside of the tracking system, they can provide defensive value to any effort to protect assets from attacks using hazmat as a weapon. This report is a sister publication to MTI Report 09-03, Potential Terrorist Uses of Highway-Borne Hazardous Materials. That publication was created in response to the Department of Homeland Security´s request that the Mineta Transportation Institute´s National Transportation Security Center of Excellence provide research and insights regarding the security risks created by the highway transportation of hazardous materials

ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education

In This Issue Current Legislative and Regulatory lssues What to Do When Both Sides Are Right: RIAA and Academia Advertorial: Considerations for Enterprise Emergency Notification Systems Advertorial: Telephony and the Creation of the Continuous Campus Key Findings from the ACUTA 2007 Trends Survey Trolling for Security Breaches and Digital Forensic Evidence Campuses Taking a Hard Look at Emergency Response Plans Roles and Regulations-Taking Back Control of the Network Bill D. Morris Award ACUTA Ruth A. Michalecki Award lnstitutional Excellence Award Interview President\u27s Message From the Executive Directo

Campus Communications Systems: Converging Technologies

This book is a rewrite of Campus Telecommunications Systems: Managing Change, a book that was written by ACUTA in 1995. In the past decade, our industry has experienced a thousand-fold increase in data rates as we migrated from 10 megabit links (10 million bits per second) to 10 gigabit links (10 billion bits per second), we have seen the National Telecommunications Policy completely revamped; we have seen the combination of voice, data, and video onto one network; and we have seen many of our service providers merge into larger corporations able to offer more diverse services. When this book was last written, A CUT A meant telecommunications, convergence was a mathematical term, triple play was a baseball term, and terms such as iPod, DoS, and QoS did not exist. This book is designed to be a communications primer to be used by new entrants into the field of communications in higher education and by veteran communications professionals who want additional information in areas other than their field of expertise. There are reference books and text books available on every topic discussed in this book if a more in-depth explanation is desired. Individual chapters were authored by communications professionals from various member campuses. This allowed the authors to share their years of experience (more years than many of us would care to admit to) with the community at large. Foreword Walt Magnussen, Ph.D. Preface Ron Kovac, Ph.D. 1 The Technology Landscape: Historical Overview . Walt Magnussen, Ph.D. 2 Emerging Trends and Technologies . Joanne Kossuth 3 Network Security . Beth Chancellor 4 Security and Disaster Planning and Management Marjorie Windelberg, Ph.D. 5 Student Services in a University Setting . Walt Magnussen, Ph.D. 6 Administrative Services David E. O\u27Neill 7 The Business Side of Information Technology George Denbow 8 The Role of Consultants . David C. Metz Glossary Michelle Narcavag

Accountability in Health Systems and the Potential of mHealth

The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) (and of mobile phones in particular) across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has generated considerable excitement in development circles regarding their potential to revolutionise service delivery in health systems. Broadly speaking, such innovations, widely referred to as mHealth, make possible new ways of collecting, collating and managing health and health service-related data, and novel means of communication between and among citizens, civil society, health service personnel and government actors. This can empower citizens to better understand, care and advocate for their own health; health workers to deliver improved services; and government actors to enforce or build health policies that uphold the health rights of all citizens, including poor and marginalised groups who are often systematically excluded from health systems. As mHealth is in its infancy, and most projects to date have been small in scale, this potential is still being tested. Furthermore, most research has focused on the extent to which mHealth has improved service delivery and/or health outcomes in the short term. There has been little explicit attention given to whether and how mHealth might improve accountability for public health services – that is, to what extent mHealth can enhance citizens’ abilities to demand improved services from providers and government in line with their rights, and/or augment the capacity and willingness of providers and government to respond to citizens’ needs and demands – both in the short and the long term. This Working Paper aims to begin to fill this gap by exploring literature on accountability in health systems and on mHealth and to build theoretical and empirical bridges between them. In so doing, we lay out a clearer understanding of the role that mHealth can play in accountability for public health services in LMICs, as well as its limitations. At the centre of this role is technology-facilitated information which, for instance, can help governments enforce and improve existing health policy, and which can assist citizens and civil society to communicate with each other to learn more about their rights, and to engage in data collection, monitoring and advocacy. Ultimately however, information, facilitated as it may be by mHealth, does not automatically lead to improved accountability. Different forms of health care come with different accountability challenges to which mHealth is only variably up to task. Furthermore, health systems, embedded as they are in diverse political, social and economic contexts, are extremely complex, and accountability requires far more than information. Thus, mHealth can serve as a tool for accountability, but is likely only able to make a difference in institutional systems that support accountability in other ways (both formal and informal) and in which political actors and health service providers are willing and able to change their behaviour.Future Health Systems Research Programme ConsortiumMaking All Voices CountUnited States Agency for International DevelopmentSwedish International Development Cooperation AgencyOmidyar NetworkUK Department for International DevelopmentEconomic and Social Research Counci

Building Adaptive Capacity: An Analysis of Innovations in Information and Communication Technology in Post-Earthquake Haiti

New information and communication technology (ICT) platforms that emerged in the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, have been hyped for their ability to spatialize and coordinate disaster relief efforts and, more broadly, to assist short-term mitigation efforts. This research examines the role of recent innovations in ICT in augmenting the adaptive capacity of the Haitian state to carry out mitigation and adaptation planning. Case studies, analysis of communication flows, and interviews were used to assess the state uptake of three different mobile and open source platforms, including: Ushahidi/Noula, SIS-KLOR, and OpenStreetMap. Findings suggest while these new platforms do offer the potential to increase state efficiencies, assess community need, and produce geospatial information, a combination of fear of responsibility, limited resources, lack of local ownership, and path dependency render foreign technologies unsuitable for Haitian use and impede institutionalization. Recommendations focus on shifting practice from investing in foreign technologies to promoting domestic innovation in ICT by strengthening and updating intellectual property legislation and investing in domestic tech firms. This research is relevant to strategic planners, policy-makers, and international organizations working in the IT secto