American Security Today September Digital Magazine September 2016 | Page 40

Volume 7

The Future of Crisis Communication in
Transportation

By John Linstrom, Community Engagement Manager, AtHoc
Division of Blackberry

September 2016 Edition
large numbers of people. With so many individuals
seeking to step onto a train, plane, bus, ship, tram,
or taxi, transportation centers are and will remain,
prime targets for attack.

(Learn More, courtesy of AtHocSystems and YouTube)

One of the key issues that continues to frustrate
emergency management operators at transportation hubs is the inability to contact individuals outside the reach of the agency’s communications
infrastructure, or at surrounding organizations not
linked into a collaborative framework.
The need for these capabilities is compelling. A
train derailment can lead to a toxic cloud being
released near a population center. Response to a
plane crash might be delayed because civilian traffic impedes the ability of first responders to reach
the site. A flood in a port area could cause hazardous substances to leak from an industrial plant
or storage tank, spreading poisonous discharge
across thousands of acres downstream.
Events away from a transportation hub can also
have widely dispersed effects. If an area has been
quarantined due to a natural disaster or industrial
accident, freight and carriage companies need to
be able to locate their vehicles immediately and reroute them to safe locations.
Potential terrorist activity only adds to the urgency.
The unique nature of any transportation hub means
that parts of the facility can be secured aggressively, but other sections must allow open flows of

Many transportation organizations already have
some means for internal emergency alerting within
individual facilities. The next step for crisis management is to automate and extend those capabilities, so that multiple organizations and communities can coordinate their response, collaborating so
that all available resources are used as efficiently
as possible to contain the situation and accelerate
recovery.
Two recent technological innovations have brought
us much closer to universal collaborative emergency response. The first innovation links data-driven,
highly automated crisis communication systems
with other forms of emergency preparedness software, enabling faster, more accurate transfer of information that gives emergency managers critical
insight into the situation at hand.
For example, industrial plants at a port authority
can use one automated system to catalog all hazardous chemicals stored in that facility – and where
in that plant the substances are being used at any
given date and time – connected directly to the
emergency alerting system. If the plant receives
an emergency alert from the port, the combined
system immediately polls the plant to identify any
operations that might lead to an explosion, fire, or
leak, given the nature of the emergency at hand.
The plant can then initiate the appropriate emergency plan.
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