| Volume 6, No. 8 | Avagene Moore, Editor |
Disaster Management
Services
Integrated Project Team
24 Center Street, Suite 103
Stafford, VA 22554
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AUGUST 2005
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1. Update
on DMIS
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| 1. Update on DMIS |
We've seen a lot of innovative applications of DMIS over the years and we are happy to find it being used in so many ways. Our goal is to help you be better prepared to manage emergencies and the more use of DMIS the better you are able to do that. One of the things DMIS does best is share information about incidents. Traditionally this is used for just that - significant events shared in the emergency management community – but expanding its use can benefit your community directly. Here are a few ideas and we hope you will share yours with us. Community Leadership - Sharing information in the traditional manner becomes increasingly difficult the farther you get from the team working the incident; this can cause loss of time and disrupt effectiveness during response. One way of easily sharing daily information is expanding DMIS to include your senior leadership. They are unlikely to be (or want to be) expert users of DMIS but they could easily benefit from the system. If you keep an open incident for daily operations, the leadership can keep the DMIS system up on the desktop with the map displayed. A quick look at the map will show any activity going on that he or she may need to know about. It works really well if the map is marked up by most of the major community organizations. In this case, police, fire, public works and emergency management keep the important items posted when they are affecting the community and remove the icons when the problem is over. The leader can glance at the map to see road closures, hazards or accidents, fire responses or other community activities such as sporting events or parades. The leadership includes whoever you want - the Mayor, the town council, even community project managers or vendors. And they don't need to be restricted to the office - DMIS can run on many home computers with access to the Internet as well. Remember that you can restrict the rights of any member to allow them to see and add only those things they need to. You may want to see if the mapping information can be made available over your community cable station. You probably would want to keep a separate COG for actual incident management, but the ability of the community to benefit from daily sharing of information is important, and the daily use means you will have a trained, experienced cadre of people who know how to share information when an emergency takes place. They also will be able to get information without tying up the telephone and the time of the response personnel. A community that uses DMIS to plan and operate the annual Town Day or fireworks display is more efficient at coordinating work, sharing information and, most importantly, better prepared to handle any emergency that may arise. So, consider taking DMIS to your leadership - I believe they will be glad you did! (Provided by: Chip Hines, PMP, Program Manager, Disaster Management eGov Initiative, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Emergency Preparedness and Response/FEMA, Department of Homeland Security) Technical Tips - Taking the Mystery Out of the Proxy Server For most users,
installing DMIS only takes a few minutes and they are up and running
without a care in the world. However, some users have to contend with
the dreaded Proxy Server configurations that their network administrators
force upon them. The developers of DMIS Version 2.2 have strived to
make things a little easier for those who work in a proxy environment.
In DMIS Version 2.2, the Configuration Administration Tool attempts
to identify if a proxy setting is required and then prompts the user
to enter the proxy information. The automatic update feature in DMIS
also prompts the user for proxy settings. Finally, by running the VPN
tool stand alone, the user can set the VPN to use the default Browser
VPN settings. For those of you who have to tolerate the frustration
of a proxy environment, things just got a little bit easier and more
reliable.
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| 2. Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) Outreach |
Last spring, the
Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed all Federal agencies
to employ DMIS in their operations centers and to use the Common Alerting
Protocol (CAP) standard for all alerts. OMB has oversight of the President’s
Management Council’s electronic Government (e-Gov) initiatives
which include Disaster Management. DMIS is a portion of the Disaster
Management e-Gov initiative. The DMIS Responder Liaison Team has been
heavily engaged supporting eleven agencies with DMIS Collaborative Operating
Group (COG) planning, COG creation, and training. DMIS presentations
and training sessions to widely distributed agency representatives have
been accomplished via Microsoft Live Meeting at substantial time and
travel costs savings over traditional onsite presentations. The Connecticut State Emergency Manager recently sent an email to DMIS coordinators/administrators and emergency managers throughout the state requesting that they all install DMIS Release 2.2 as soon as possible. The email announced that the first CT DMIS on-line responder “muster” will be held in August “for testing, training, and perhaps an ad-hoc virtual table-top exercise.” Other Outreach Activities
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You may also receive the upgrade to DMIS v2.2 directly from us by emailing Rick Hauschildt with your choice of the following:
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a DMIS COG Administrator and have not received any emails concerning distribution of the new release, it is vitally important that you update your contact information by emailing Rick Hauschildt immediately so that we can get in touch with you. The Responder Liaison Team is presently engaged in a “call campaign” to all of our registered COG Administrators. The campaign is designed to update contact information and poll DMIS users to see if they need any technical or functional training assistance. We want to increase utilization of this valuable tool. We expect that this process will take some time, as we presently have over 1,400 registered DMIS COGs. We are also diligently working to update all of the DMIS training materials from v2.1.1 to v2.2. Upon completion of that task, and after QA review, we will be posting the updated courses to the Training Section of the DMI-Services Website. If you have questions related to DMIS COG development, DMIS Tools use, the status of a DMIS registration request, or would like information on other registered DMIS COGs in your area, please call or email Rick Hauschildt, DMIS COG Manager, (540) 288-5671.
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What’s
New at DisasterHelp.gov?
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| 5. Upcoming Events |
September – December 2005: Emergency Evacuation Workshop, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Various dates and U.S. locations. See http://www.nfpa.org/catalog/product.asp?pid=eew or call (800) 344-3555. September 12-16, 2005: National Floodproofing Conference III. Charleston, West Virginia. See http://www.floods.org/Conferences,%20Calendar/nfpc3.asp. September 25-29, 2005: Dam Safety 2005. Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO). New Orleans, Louisiana. See http://www.damsafety.org/. October 20-22, 2005: National Disaster Mental Health Conference. Estes Park, Colorado. Conference is for mental health providers, first responders, emergency planners, etc. Call for papers is open through August 25, 2005. See http://www.rmrinstitute.org/fall2005.html .
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August 24: Our topic will be the National Transportation Incident Management Coalition (NTIMC) with speaker, John Corbin, NTIMC Chair. September 14: Dr. Richard Sylves, University of Delaware, will present a thought provoking topic, Revolutionary Change Needed in Emergency Management. About the
EIIP: The EIIP is an educational non-profit association
of individuals and organizations seeking to enhance their effectiveness
in coping with disasters and emergency situations by exploring the opportunity
for sharing information and ideas made possible by electronic technology.
The EIIP also shares its vision and educational opportunities through
the EIIP Community on the DisasterHelp.gov Web site http://www.disasterhelp.gov
.
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7. About the Disaster Mangement E-gov Initiative (DisasterHelp.gov and DMIS) |
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