Well, we really don’t have a unified national alert system that is able to alert the population, first responders, law enforcement, etc, in case of natural or man made dissasters.
So what did I do about this? Well, I got together with a group of homeland security and IT security professionals and designed a system intended to be the “911” system of the national emergency alert capability. A unified system that everybody will remember. In other words, a one stop shop for the emergency notifications.
I decided to donate the system to the entire country for free. So now, federal, state, and local governments, law enforcement, emergency responders and schools can have a free system they can use to alert the population, employees, students, etc, of real time security and emergency events (terrorism, evacuations, pandemics…)
At the same time many people were asking how can they contribute to the security of their communities, states and the country in general, without actually joining a government agency. I came up with the idea of H.E.G, or Human Emergency Grid, were people volunteer their exertise and time in case of emergencies.
To be continued…
…continued.
So what if you need somebody that speaks chinese (a specific dialect), and knows how to fix the 911 system or knows the proper shutdown sequence for the local nuclear power plant reactor? How would a local, state or federal government find help like this is time of crisis?
Well, if that particular agency has an account with United Alert, then they can search HEG for the right specialist.
How about being able to restore the Internet after a major cyberattack not only against the country’s critical infrastructure but against the Internet backbone as well? Do you know anybody in your agency that can actually do this?
HEG is something the government needs whether they admit it or not…
To be continued…
Robert, first of all thank you for being such a visionary! Very interesting concept with HEG. Also thanks for the heads up the other day on that swine flu travel alert. I joined your ‘national security’ group at United Alert the other day and forwarded the CDC site to my dad. He has since cancelled his trip to Mexico! Thank goodness! I was so worried.
thanks for the comments “dancin eight”. I’m glad the info was useful. We are running the “National Security” alert group inside United Alert to provide real time homeland security, terrorism alerts, national security, travel and health alerts that affect the US and its citizens. Alerts can be received as text messages and emails. Forums are also available for members to comment on the alerts or add additional info.
You might want to check this out-
http://www.cdc.gov/ncphi/programs-projects.html#biosurveillance
http://www.cdc.gov/PHIN/news-events/archive/grid_article.html
Adam,
Good links, thanks. We currently monitor national homeland security events via various sources/methods. We also have correlation engines that pull the data together for analysis/prediction. We are in the process of designing a terrorism correlation and prediction engine, which hopefully will be able to predict to some extent an imminent terrorist attack on CONUS.
I will be discussing that in a later post as well…