Bentonville, AK - by Bill T.

The Northwest Arkansas Community College in conjunction with Wal-Mart hosted a national forum titled “Fostering Cooperation with Local, State, Regional, and Federal Public/Private Sector Initiatives” on November 3 and 4 in Bentonville, AR. Business leaders along with Federal, state, and local emergency management officials came together to discuss the critical role that the private sector can play in helping communities rebuild their economies and recover more quickly after disasters.

Currently, more than 27 states are pursuing the development of a business emergency operations center and finding other innovative ways to support businesses in preparing for or recovering from disasters. In addition many private sector members, such as Wal-Mart and Lowes, have their own emergency operations centers. The idea of a business EOC (BEOC) is to facilitate coordination of business and volunteer organizations with the public sector and to engage businesses to provide services or resources during emergencies.

Pennsylvania does not currently have a BEOC, but Chester County EMA is exploring options on how to better incorporate the private sector into its operations.  Some of the current projects we are working on include reaching out to the private sector to obtain what type of resources or services they could provide during an emergency along with creating channels in which we can better share accurate information so that businesses can make more informed decisions.

Various states gave presentations on best practices for implementing a business EOC and the systems they utilize to conduct operations. The common theme seemed to be that the public sector must reach out and build relationships with the private sector prior to an event or emergency. It was said multiple times that during an emergency is not the time to be exchanging business cards. Another point was that government has resources, but the private sector has a whole lot more. Building those relationships now will give the public sector better access to a much larger assortment of resources and services. One other area that was stressed over and over was that of information sharing and communication between the private and public sector. Having clear channels of communication and accurate information flow will better serve all parties involved. The goal is getting businesses back to business after a disaster so that life can begin to resume on a normal level.

Last year FEMA created a Private Sector Division to better serve and build the coordination between the public and private sector. Representatives from that division, along with FEMA Administrator Fugate, gave presentations on FEMA efforts that are engaging and working with the private sector. Administrator Fugate made some great statements, but this one seemed to sum up what this forum was all about: “emergency management community, at all levels, must focus on how they can support local businesses, from retailers to restaurants to banks, to reopen as quickly as possible after a disaster, so that disaster survivors can access their services and employers can keep revenue and jobs in that community.”

Knowledge Center Users Conference - By Bill T.

The 5^th Annual Knowledge Center Training and User’s Conference was held October 26-27 in Pittsburgh. For those of you unfamiliar with Knowledge Center, it is internet based incident management software that Chester County Department of Emergency Services utilizes on a daily basis. This software enables DES to more efficiently manage incidents of all natures in a more organized manner. This software is used by many counties, municipalities, and various other agencies throughout the Commonwealth and other states.

The conference provided insight into some of the upcoming releases that Knowledge Center will be conducting. November releases will include a more advanced and user friendly ESRI viewer mapping system. In addition a damage assessment module will be added to simplify and better organize the damage assessment process. Open discussion forums were also held to provide feedback from different agencies on what they would like to see in future developments of the software.

Future developments of Knowledge Center, which is currently only available in Internet Explorer Browser, include the availability to access the software on all browsers. In addition the software will soon be available on the Ipad and other mobile devices.  The software development team is actively working on developing a mobile suite of applications.  Another future development in the works is integrating credentialing with the software.

Presentations were made by various individuals within the Emergency Management Community. The director of Westmoreland County, PA EMA provided a presentation on how Knowledge Center provided his organization regional situational awareness throughout all phases of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. Westmoreland deployed a swift water rescue task force to the Eastern part of PA during both storms.  A representative from Anoka County, Minnesota (EMA) provided insight on how the use of SKYWARN and Knowledge Center can better leverage situational awareness. Finally a representative from the Delaware Valley Healthcare Council provided a demo on how Knowledge Center provides a valuable connection between hospitals and emergency management agencies during events and disasters.

Overall the event was a great success. It provided emergency management agencies the ability to come together from all over the Commonwealth, and various other states, to discuss best practices and lessons learned during past incidents and events and how Knowledge Center has proven to be a great incident management asset.