The All Hazards Consortium, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security & Preparedness, MITRE Corporation, and the DHS Science and Technology Office of First Responder Programs present:
REGIONAL "SITUATIONAL AWARENESS" WORKSHOP
A "One Region" Approach Towards Public/Private Information Sharing
August 16, 2012
McLean, Virginia
8:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Registration is open and complimentary only for qualified attendees which includes federal, state and local government employees and private sector owner operators.
Last week's severe thunderstorms (and derecho) in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area emphasized the need to maintain situational awareness during a disaster.
Communicating and coordinating response efforts between the public and private sector organizations during disasters is lacking the needed information sharing and data integration in order to provide the appropriate information quickly to both public and private decision makers in a timely manner.
The All Hazards Consortium, in partnership with the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security & Preparedness, MITRE Corporation, and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate's Office of First Responder Programs is co-hosting a multi-state workshop focused on situational awareness and information sharing platforms and standards to be used between public and private sectors during natural and man-made disasters.
The Regional Situational Awareness Workshop will focus on improving information sharing and data interoperability between the various public and private tools and platforms by focusing on the "standards" being used and gathering recommendations from local/state governments and private sector owner/operators to provide to the developers of tools (e.g. federal agencies, academia and private sector organizations) on the "suite of standards approach" that could provide a common framework and a path forward to support information sharing and data interoperability of all systems at the state and local levels.
Workshop Speakers/Panelists
The workshop will bring together leaders, operational professionals and stakeholders from several state/local government catastrophic planning efforts, along with private sector companies from specific sectors (power, food, telecommunications, transportation, etc..) and federal agencies for interactive discussions and recommendations.
Speakers include:
- Dr. Robert Griffin, Director of First Responder Programs, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security
- Joseph Picciano, Deputy Director, New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness
- Barbara Toohill, Vice President and Director, Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute (MITRE), DHS Federally Funded Research and Development Center
- Chris McIntosh, Interoperability Coordinator, Office of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, Commonwealth of Virginia
- William Robinson, Security Manager, Valero (PBF Energy)
- Captain Xenophon Gikas, Los Angeles Fire Department
- John L. Shaner, Emergency Preparedness Manager, PEPCO (PHI Holdings)
- Chief Aaron Kustermann, Illinios State Police
- Mel Blizzard, Security Manager, BG&E
- Dan Stoneking, Director, Private Sector Office of External Affairs, FEMA (tentative)
- And more!
Goals/Objectives
1) Develop shared intent, perspectives and a common framework for discussions and recommendations
- Raise knowledge and collaboration base levels in the Data Standards and Information Sharing domains among state, federal, local, and private sector stakeholders
- Expand emergency preparedness and homeland security dialog around the topic of Situational Awareness and its tools and strategies
2) Develop recommendations on approaches and suite of standards to be used in future
- Provide researchers and tool developers with recommendations from state/local government and the private sector on common standards to be used for data sharing in order to move towards a more integrated information "interoperability & sharing" environment between state/local/federal government and eventually the private sector owner/operators of the critical infrastructure
3) Align Research & Development Efforts
- Identify and align existing research efforts to minimize the duplicity of systems
- Align funding to maximize the Department of Homeland Security "system of systems" approach through data standards and common frameworks
- Integrate planning efforts into system design and development efforts to improve functionality and increase value to the emergency preparedness community.
4) Enhance public/private situational awareness partnerships
- Enable and enhance the Department of Homeland Security's relationship with state, local, and private sector owner/operator emergency management and homeland security stakeholder communities:
- Present and demonstrate state-of-the-art situational awareness platforms and strategies
- Increase knowledge and understanding among DHS stakeholders of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) relevant to the Homeland Security enterprise and how those FFRDC resources can be applied and accessed to address DHS stakeholder challenges
- Demonstrate how the standardization of information and data sharing in emergency management would greatly improve situational awareness, communications, interoperability, information sharing and all-hazards response.
- Identify a path where information sharing and data mobility can be achieved in an emergency situation regardless of location and communications medium and/or devices.
Schedule
8:00am - 9:00am Registration / Coffee & Pastries
9:00am - noon Welcome/Keynote/Panel Sessions
Noon - 12:45pm Lunch on your Own
12:45pm - 2:00pm Discussion / Adjourn
Schedule is subject to change
Miscellaneous
- This event is closed to the media.
- All attendees will need to produce appropriate identification (i.e., driver's license or government-issued id). Name badges will be issued and checked on site at all times.
- Dress is business or business casual.
- No registrations will be performed on site for this event, but substitutions will be allowed.
Location
The Workshop will be held at MITRE Corporation in Building 1 at 7515 Colshire Drive in McLean, Virginia 22102-7539. For a map and directions, visit
We look forward to seeing you at our event.
Sincerely,
Laura Johnson
Manager, Conferences & Outreach
All Hazards Consortium
