CONSEQUENCE MANAGEMENT INTEROPERABILITY SERVICES	Integrated Project Team www.cmi-services.org

FAST TRACK TO INITIAL OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY

The CMI-Services Government Program Manager MR. Doug Bryce, PM Marine/NBC Marine Corps Systems Command Quantico Va. approved the FAST TRACK plan to deliver the first increment of CMI-Services functionality to the nation in February of 2002. FAST TRACK development puts both the Tactical Information Exchange (TIE) functionality and Open Source Intelligence (OSI) reports in CMI-Services stakeholders underway throughout the country.

This fact sheet recaps the needs for CMI-Services, provides details on the initial functionality that will be available as a result of the FAST TRACK program, and summarizes the remaining Release One capabilities that will be deployed during 2002.

NEEDS FOR INTEROPERABILITY SERVICES

After the attacks of September 11, the National League of Cities surveyed hundreds of cities, inquiring about their posture for dealing with terrorism (details are on the web at www.nlc.org). Commenting on readiness needs, many respondents identified shortfalls in their capability to share information effectively with other responder organizations. This is wholly consistent with previous findings by the CMI-Services project team - that interoperability is a pervasive problem for stakeholders. CMI-Services participated in numerous stakeholder encounters this year beginning with the NEMA winter meeting in February, and including events in Washington DC; Salt Lake City; Anaheim; Orlando; Hunt Valley, Maryland; Big Sky, Montana; Fort Washington, PA; Fort Leonard Wood; Albuquerque; Chicago; Springfield, Illinois; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Dallas and the New York City EOC. In each of these events, the incident response community has reacted extremely favorably to the interoperability capabilities that CMI-Services will provide.

The principal goals of CMI-Services remain the same: (1) to provide a nationwide service for information sharing among dissimilar incident response and emergency management systems at all levels; (2) to provide stakeholders more convenient access to information repositories; and (3) to provide no-cost applications/automated tools for municipal, state, and federal responders’ planning and operations.

FAST TRACK DEVELOPMENT FUNCTIONALITY

The following capabilities will be available in the initial version of CMI-Services scheduled to be released in February of 2002:

• The Open Source Intelligence (OSI) - Bi-monthly narrative reports that provide both analysis and raw information (relevant to terrorism and WMD attacks) drawn from open source material. These reports will be available to all authorized CMI-Services operators and can be filtered by FEMA region if desired.

• Tactical Information Exchange (TIE) has two major components:

o Incident Information refers to sharing of situational awareness information, e.g. text, maps, images, floor plans, weather, etc. Incident establishment, core incident information and alert notification are displayed upon entering a TIE session. Locally developed Incident Information forms may be attached as files to augment template information fields as needed. On-Scene Weather information will reference the current weather conditions with information designed to assist first responders to enter an incident hot zone safely. The Casualties and Population Action tabs give estimates of deaths, injuries and missing people and provide evacuation and shelter information. Property Damage information aids in preparing a summary of the area experiencing damage. Building plans, if available, can be attached. Infrastructure provides information on damage to and interruption of utilities, transportation, and supplies. Medical information includes hospital locations, outpatient and inpatient capacity, and numbers of patients, special capacities and special requirements. This capability includes providing a basic, shareable geospatial information system (GIS) capability for all CMI-Services operators. Organizations can share maps, develop overlays for maps, and mark-up maps and share that information with other CMI-Services operators. o

o Exchange refers to the sharing of information between First and Second responders regarding supporting requirements. CMI-Services operators will be able to rapidly exchange comprehensive situation information with supporting second response organizations that they select. This enhanced ability to present a "common operating picture" improves the overall level of situational awareness of incident conditions, and comes with tools to expedite information sharing regarding mutual aid, state and Federal assistance, and cascading consequences. The Exchange Folder component is tightly integrated with TIE. It provides the capability to conduct an active exchange of information among organizations seeking outside assistance and second (supporting) responder organizations providing such assistance. Exchange Folder also provides tools to submit a Specific Needs Request or Reply which first responders can use to list equipment, supplies, or capabilities they require; and multiple supporting organizations can use to identify their capability and willingness to contribute items requested.

ADDITIONAL RELEASE ONE CAPABILITIES

The fielding of the remainder of Release One functionality will occur as testing is completed and is anticipated to be completed by September of 2002 for Release 1.

Expert Reference Capabilities include:

(1) Agent Identification (ID) Plus - For identifying chemical agents, toxic industrial chemicals, and toxic industrial materials using victim symptoms and observable characteristics reported from the incident scene; "plus" provision of precautionary and characteristics details;

(2) Online Conferencing – Convenient audio-visual teleconferencing for consequence management purposes (particularly discussions with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during biological incidents. This capability provides not only video teleconferencing, but chat functions, file sharing, and white board sharing as well; and

(3) Regional Weather Forecasting – Hour by hour forecasts for 48 hours for each Zip code in the United States including 143 Doppler radar images and storm warning services.

Consequence Management Tools include:

(1) Target Folder - A pre-incident planning tool that is the first element in the planning approach referred to as "the Mission Folder approach". Target folder provides a methodology to plan and save information about buildings or locations and events that may be subject to a terrorist incident;

(2) Geospatial Information Services (GIS) – Map information including "base maps" for every location in the country and the capability to provide layers of information (e.g. – hospital locations, roadblocks, plume projections, etc.) on top of the base map, and

(3) Infrastructure Information Plan - Enables localities to pre-position key deployment information (contact information, infrastructure information, etc.) needed by Second Responders.

Web Functions include access to federal grant information, exercise plans and schedules, a Consequence Management directory, access to the Blast FX tool, and a capabilities catalog consisting of the InterAgency Board’s Standardized Equipment List (SEL) of equipment and supplies for WMD responders.

POCs:
Roger Fritzel fritzelr-c@battelle.org
Art Slavinski slavinskia@battelle.org

Functionality Chart
Release 1 Function Groups