Category: Disaster recovery
November 4th, 2009
European Parliament to revisit telecom regulations
The Members of the European Parliament (MEP) are to convene once more on November 4 to discuss Internet access, along with new rules that are currently being tabled and will be the sole topic up for discussion. At the last meeting on October 6, the Council of EU Telecommunications Ministers formally rejected Parliament’s second-reading amendment on internet access, which dealt with access freedom, indirectly pointed to file sharing and creating a law on disconnecting users that do so illegally.
In a press release by the European Parliament, the Council for EU telecommunications will be discussing a variety of legal issues that have caused a stir around the world on restricting internet access.
Alejo VIDAL-QUADRAS (EPP, Spain) who heads Parliament’s Conciliation Committee delegation, said after the last of these meetings on Thursday morning: “We go into the negotiations in a spirit of compromise, but determined to defend users’ rights and committed to the development of a regulatory framework that will incentivise investment and open up the market. We will do all we can to achieve a good solution, but Council has to understand that Parliament will defend without hesitation the freedom of the citizens it represents”.
The group is reviewing a complete package of innovation, safety and other reforms in respects to telecommunications, including traditional television and radio broadcast, security, privacy, email spam, cyberterrorism, phone number portability and those with disabilities accessing technology. Currently the council is at a significant cross roads on the Internet access and file sharing, copyright and this single issue could scrap the entire telecom package being tabled and given final reading for passage.
Looming larger is how European Parliament’s new regulations and Laws would affect sovereignty of each nation’s jurisdiction with respect to enforcement. One such example: if an individual is convicted of an infraction in Spain, would that country’s court decision (if based on this new set of Laws) be then applicable to all other nations inside the EU with respect to the individual’s conviction? If it is enforceable and agreed upon by all signing nations, this may indicate that Europe is beginning to eliminate the issue of sovereignty all together.
October 24th, 2007
Using Twitter to report on SoCal fires
Cell phone networks are overwhelmed in San Diego and other parts of southern California as residents thoughtlessly make voice calls to alert relatives of their condition, W. David Stephenson, a homeland security consultant, says.
“Every time we have a disaster, people use their phones inappropriately,” he said.
What’s appropriate is text messaging, not voice - and in fact Stephenson reported that San Diego has temporarily banned voice use of cells.
Individuals and media are flocking to Twitter as a way to get the word out, Wired reports.
“Basically, every channel of information I have from the outside world is being funneled into my Twitter feed,” says Ritter, a web developer and blogger.
Acting as an ad hoc news aggregator of sorts, Nate is currently sitting in his home in San Diego’s University Town Center neighborhood watching broadcast television news, listening to local radio reports and monitoring streaming video on the web. He’s also collecting instant messages, SMS text messages and e-mails from friends in the area and posting everything to his Twitter account.
Also posting to Twitter, Flickr and blogs: KPBS, San Diego’s public radio station.
KPBS managing online editor Leng Caloh says she and her co-workers had been “playing around” with Twitter, using it for internal communications for several weeks. But as the danger from the fires grew over the weekend, web traffic at KPBS.org swelled to 36 times the normal amount.
“We got so much traffic on Monday that our server got overloaded,” says Caloh. “Everything went down, including our RSS feed. At that point, I said ‘Forget it — it’s going to be all about Twitter and Google Maps now,’ because they aren’t served by us and they were still working.”
Stephenson also told Wired that using Twitter to spread the word about road conditions and evacuation alerts is:
” nowhere near as important as using Twitter to let your family know you’re ok (instead of cell calls, which every time they’re used in disasters end up crashing the network — and don’t get through, either): because they’re packet based, they’re cued up until they can route around obstacles or gaps in the network, and the 140-character limit means they take up a tiny amount of bandwidth, leaving it for those who need it most.
He also called for communities to set up Wikis in preparation for disaster:
“One of the worst things in a disaster is to continue to distribute out-of-date information,” he noted, adding that wikis are ideally suited for getting in information from many sources and being able to edit and update it.
“We need to start having communities create an on-the-shelf Wiki that they can quickly populate with specific information,” Stephenson added. “Each of us may know some tiny piece of the pie and then others can update this information.” But, of course, the I.T. work has to be done before the disaster strikes.
September 18th, 2007
Rutgers, Va. Tech join forces on digital archive
Rutgers University librarians are helping to create a digital archive of thousands of artifacts collected after the Virginia Tech massacre, The Star-Ledger reports.
Among the artifacts being captured: some of the folder paper cranes that students and others made as a symbol of peace after the killings.
“The archive will provide powerful healing and powerful lessons for anyone who wants to examine any aspect of the tragedy,” said Grace Agnew, Rutgers’ associate university librarian for Digital Library Systems.
Digital archives of disasters are becoming a popular way to share the impact of artifacts. The September 11 Digital Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, and there are plans to digitize thousands of artifacts collected after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
“Following the event, there was such an outpouring of concern, condolences and compassion that it becomes an event in itself that needs to be remembered, ” said Eileen Hitchingham, Virginia Tech’s dean of university libraries. “We got cards, banners, posters. Taking those and making them accessible is an important part of understanding how one grieves and moves on from this time.”
Rutger’s Agnew said preserving copies of the actual artifacts is critical.
“The heart of the archive is the artifacts they preserved,” Agnew said, admitting that her own staff grew teary-eyed as they worked on the project. “They really capture the emotions that happened at Virginia Tech in a way that secondary analysis cannot.”
June 18th, 2007
P2P system for improved disaster management
Mistakes were made during Hurricane Katrine - a lot of mistakes, mostly by government officials. While technology can’t take the human error and hubris out of government, perhaps it can help the folks living in the affected region better help themselves. That’s the goal of a peer-to-peer post-disaster response system, reports BBC News.
Dubbed iCare, the system circumvents centralized government agencies and directly matches donated goods or services to the specific items that survivors have asked for.
iCare also takes care of logistical problems such as making space more efficient on delivery trucks, which speeds up the time it takes to get goods to disaster-stricken areas. The system also can record maps of victims’ locations, as well as the goods or services they have requested.
Anand Kulkarni and Ephrat Bitton, doctoral students at UC Berkeley, are developing the system. As envisioned, survivors report what they need via web terminals in aid centers or by text messaging from mobile phones. Requests are then routed to the companies, organizations or individuals that can provide exactly what they need.
“There’s a massive desire on the part of the public to help after disasters, and they just need a good way to transform that desire into something tangible for the victims,” said Mr Kulkarni.
The researchers were quite clear that this system was not intended to usurp existing aid agencies, but could supplement their endeavors.
June 8th, 2007
PA wants to be Wall Street's backup but reception is cool
Pennsylvania’s proposal to be the post-nuclear Wall Street has not been well received on the other side of the Hudson, reports the New York Times.
The idea is to create an alternative Wall Street just in case New York’s financial center comes under terrorist attack. The selling points? Pennsylvania is close to Manhattan, but not so close as to be within New York City’s theoretical nuclear blast zone. Pennsylvania is also close enough to be linked directly to the computers that run the banking and trading systems.
“We think we’re uniquely positioned,” said Catherine A. Bolton, project director of the Wall Street West consortium, whose goal is to lure financial companies based in New York to put backup facilities in a nine-county region in northeast Pennsylvania. “There are places in New Jersey, but they’re not outside the blast zone.”
So, sure of the efficacy of the plan, Gov. Edward G. Rendell has announced plans to build a $24 million network of fiber optic cables to carry data from Manhattan to the Poconos. But the idea has fallen on deaf New York ears. So far, no New York banks, investment banks or insurance companies have committed to building data backup centers in Pennsylvania.
Since the Sept. 11 attack, however, Wall Street has given a lot of thought to developing backup systems and disaster-recovery plans.
“New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are suitable alternatives for Wall Street’s backup sites, but most of them are considerably more costly than northeast Pennsylvania. There is a need for large data center space measured in tens of thousands of square feet, and cheap real estate helps, said Raouf Abdel, president of the business markets group at Level 3 in Broomfield, Colo.
May 17th, 2007
New use of Doppler radars improves hurricane tracking
Forecasters will test a new technique this summer that provides a detailed 3-D view of an approaching hurricane every six minutes and allows them to determine whether the storm is gathering strength as it nears land, according to a release from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
The technique - known as VORTRAC for Vortex Objective Radar Tracking and Circulation -
was developed by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).
“With this technique, meteorologists for the first time will be able to monitor the strength of a hurricane every few minutes as it approaches landfall and quickly alert coastal communities if it suddenly intensifies or weakens,” says NCAR scientist Wen-Chau Lee.
VORTRAC uses the Doppler radar network established along the Southeast coast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the 1980s and 1990s. Each radar can measure winds blowing toward or away from it, but no single radar could provide a 3-D picture of hurricane winds before now.
To test the technique, Lee and his collaborators applied VORTRAC retroactively to Hurricane Charley. Their technique would have accurately captured the burst in the hurricane’s intensity, they reported.
“Our research shows that this technique can capture sudden intensity changes in potentially dangerous hurricanes,” says NCAR scientist Michael Bell, a coauthor of the article.
September 1st, 2006
Security flaw knocks La. site offline
Louisiana’s Road Home site, which allows residents to apply online for home repair grants, was yanked offline last week, because of a security flaw that allowed other users’ information to be displayed to applicants. The site is back online now, said the technology vendor, ICF International. Times-Picayune reports:
The Web site — whose launch last week was sluggish because so many homeowners tried to fill out applications — has been beefed up with more "robust servers," the company said.
The Road Home program, crafted by the Louisiana Recovery Authority using $7.5 billion in federal aid for homeowners whose houses were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, provides grants of up to $150,000 for uninsured damages.
Homeowners must fill out an application before they can meet with advisors. The form asks for such personal financial information as insurance and mortgage information.
August 28th, 2006
Disaster Recovery 2.0
Strong Angel III - held last week in San Diego - is less of a formal military exercise and more of an experiment in using ad hoc social networks to perform critical disaster relief and military functions in a leadership vacuum, reports The New York Times.
My view is that the value of Strong Angel is 70 percent in the social networks that will be created,” said the organizer, Eric Rasmussen, a Navy surgeon and veteran of relief efforts on several continents. “What we do is try to bring people with disparate backgrounds together and ensure that they are forced to enter into a conversation.”
The five-day simulation involved teams from the Pentagon, NGOs and dozens of technology companies. Apparently, the ad hoc networks didn’t always work seamlessly.
Last Monday, the group began to assemble a makeshift command center at an abandoned building near the San Diego airport. But a state-of-the-art wireless network, intended to route video images, satellite map coordinates and other data — from an impressive array of mobile computers, software analysis tools and command programs — failed to come to life.
“Finally I said, ‘Lights out! Everyone turn everything off and let’s start over,’ ” said Brian D. Steckler, a computer scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who was in charge of more than a dozen interlocking networks at the heart of the command center. Hundreds of computers and even cellphones were shut down, and then the network was slowly turned back on, segment by segment. Too many high-bandwidth applications had clogged the network, including a powerful video camera and “rogue” transmitters set up by participants intent on creating their own mini-networks.
Hastily formed networks? Some were calling them fragilely formed networks. On the other hand, there was a shared system of digital satellite maps overlayed with event data from emergency workers.
The new software capability relies on a Microsoft-designed system called Simple Sharing Extensions. It has been built on industry standards, like the Web protocol known as Really Simple Syndication, or R.S.S., which was designed to enable one-way data streams. Such tools are valuable for disaster-response coordinators who require real-time data feeds from a variety of locations. The Microsoft extensions will make it possible for the feeds to display constantly changing or even conflicting data streams from multiple sources.
August 4th, 2006
Where's N.O.'s new communications systems?
Remember, in the aftermath of Katrina, all the talk about creating a state-of-the-art communications system for New Orleans, one that would instantly kick in, connect government agencies and leaders and get the word out to residents? As with so much else regarding Katrina, New Orleans is still waiting, Wired News reports.
Rep. Tim Burns (R-Mandeville) says "politics" are delaying deployment of a rapid-response emergency communications system. He sponsored legislation to require the state to set up a system, but says the governor’s office is ignoring the possibilities of the Internet. "They’re focusing on a radio-based system, which could cost hundreds of millions," he said.
Burns’ team estimated that a text-messaging system like the one successfully employed by the Swedish government to evacuate thousands of citizens from Lebanon could be set up for $20 million in less than six months. His bills, HB540 and HB619, passed the Louisiana House but were killed in Senate committee.
Other ideas are even cheaper. A local ISP, I-55, designed a disaster-communications system that would push information to cellphones, pagers, online chat systems and PCs. They say it could be set up for a mere $2 million and operated for $1 million a year.
The FIRST (flexible immediate response and safety technology) system is designed to collect information from people on the ground to build an up-to-date, accurate database. High-priority or geographically connected messages are grouped to prioritize disaster communications. The system could also accommodate sudden and massive demands during an emergency. And in the future, levee sensors could transmit developing faults, providing early alerts about potential breaches.
Ezra Hodge, co-creator of FIRST, said he was ready to set up a FIRST-style system before the 2006 hurricane season arrived. "It’s astronomically perplexing why this didn’t get done," said Hodge, "Homeland Security met with us and said they needed us. We had lunch with Gov. (Kathleen) Blanco (in May) — she said it was one of the most brilliant ideas she’d heard since the storm and wondered why it’s not being done."
The story from the Governor’s office is different these days. Mark Smith from the state’s Department of Homeland Security, says communication has basically been solved.
"When I go out into the field, I’ll take a 700-MHz and an 800-MHz radio, cell phone, BlackBerrry and AirCard for the laptop," said Smith, whose job during an emergency will be to ride herd on the media. He says cell-phone carriers have "hardened their towers — they’re supposed to be able to take a hell of a lot more during a storm."
His agency has purchased three trailer-mounted, voice-over-Internet-protocol satellite-communication systems. If a local jurisdiction loses its connectivity, one of these can be brought in by truck or helicopter and be up and running within 30 minutes, according to Smith. He added that the National Guard and the state police have "all kinds of new communications toys."
But will they work together? Do they actually address getting the word out to residents? And how much do all these toys cost? According the Louisiana State Police, more than $500 million and $10 mil a year to operate. Government is so efficient.
June 7th, 2006
Local IT businesses score big Katrina contracts
It’s not just the big contractors who are doing well from the Katrina rebuild. Some small IT businesses are also winning federal contracts, reports FCW. Firms like DataQuest Software Services, DyKon Computer Help Center and Engenius Consulting were among the Small Business Administration-certified 8(a) companies whose business actually improved during the 2005 hurricane season.
Along with the contracts, the businesses say that their relationship with the Army Corps of Engineers, the primary contracting agency in the relief efforts, has improved, increasing their chances for future contracting work.
The Small Business Association recommended DataQuest, an IT contractor based in Covington, La., to create a quality assurance system to track the work of companies removing debris. DataQuest set up a quality assurance system to track all phases of cleanup — from making sure companies had proper right-of-entry permits to maintaining a list of condemned properties.
Randy Marchiafava, the Corps’ deputy in charge of small business in the Gulf Coast area, said DataQuest “hit the ground running for us and did an excellent job.” DataQuest’s flexibility in adjusting to changing post-Katrina conditions has helped the company earn new contracts, he said.
DyKon worked with the Army engineers to rebuild network connectivity in flooded buildings, even though the company needed to relocate its own headquarters from New Orleans to Texas. With a staff of seven technicians, “We did everything from rebuilding partitions to setting up computer systems,” said Eben Dike, president of DyKon.
Engenius, which had an exisisting contract with the Army Corps, sent four teams of technicians to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“Our primary function was to provide the IT infrastructure to support those emergency response offices,” one official said.
Next Marketing provided transportation for the mobile centers, Tachyon offered satellite access and Hewlett-Packard (not exactly a small or local company) shipped hardware from Atlanta. The team installed 34 computer-equipped kiosks to provide officers with wireless Internet access via a satellite receiver on top of the command center.
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