Top Army lab seeks support for crisis response system

Experts agree that everyone responding to a terrorist threat, from firefighters to military commanders, needs to be on the same communications page before and when crisis hits. And a military officer at a top Army communications research laboratory is on a mission to see that it happens.

Major Shawn Hollingsworth, a testing and evaluations projects officer at Fort Gordon Army Battle Lab in Georgia, is working to put the pieces together, technologically and financially, for a communications system based largely on available commercial and military "off-the-shelf" items. The proposed Homeland Security Department could use it, he said.

A prototype of the network, dubbed Force Protection Command and Control Information System (FPC2IMS), is expected to be ready by mid-September. It will be demonstrated at the Consequence Management 2002 conference at Fort Gordon in late September.

Despite operating on a shoestring budget by military terms-the entire project has cost $179,000 to date-Hollingsworth's project is attracting high-level attention. Jim Flyzik, senior adviser to White House Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, has viewed it and requested more information, Hollingsworth said. Flyzik also is vice chairman of the Federal Chief Information Officers Council.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, Transportation Department and e-business department for the Navy also have expressed interest, he said.

What makes FPC2IMS distinct, according to Hollingsworth, is that it joins four existing technologies into a Web-based system for sharing information, with the ability for users to see the same information seconds apart while aggregating emergency-response technologies.

It uses the existing Information Dissemination Management Tactical system, which is a Web-based technology employed for sharing information on battlefields. Hollingsworth said intelligence agencies like the FBI, CIA and Justice Department currently are on different networks that cannot communicate.

"If you had this system, the FBI on the East Coast could know what's going on at the FBI in the West," he said. Currently, they must place a phone call. The new system updates every 30 seconds.

The proposed network also incorporates the Pentagon's Century electronic monitoring system for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. Hollingsworth's project also uses Message 911, which uses sensors to track disasters or attacks, such as the release of a chemical agent. Message 911 identifies the area at risk and sends automated phone notifications and directions.

Finally, FPC2IMS will use ArcIMS, the most widely used Web-based geographic information system in the country. The device can generate map layers and highlights "high-value" targets such as critical infrastructure, Hollingsworth said.

Hollingsworth hopes more funding will follow to implement the project nationally. "We're looking for customers who want to take what we have and develop it," he said in a phone interview.

The government should avoid buying systems from the many companies offering to modify their technologies for large sums, he said. "It would be crazy for the government to do that when they already have the technology."