Emergency Management Solutions

Recent disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the events of September 11, 2001 have demonstrated to everyone the critical importance of good emergency infrastructure and planning. When a disaster happens, the response must be swift and aggressive, but also rigorously organized and well-coordinated. Chaos must be contained, and order quickly established, so that emergency responders of all types can quickly access the site, share information, and proceed with their work in the most secure environment possible.

Security plays an important role in an effective emergency response, as does equipment and technology from the physical security industry. Security in an emergency goes far beyond controlling the perimeter; responders at all levels and from all agencies need an end-to-end security solution to support the many components of an emergency response:

• Law enforcement and security officials need the means to create a secure perimeter around the emergency site (or sites), and a way to verify the identity of every certified emergency responder - including volunteers and responders from the private sector.

• Command centers responsible for deploying resources need to know who and what are on site, so they can route people, materials and equipment to where they are needed most.

• Government agencies must have the ability to quickly share information across jurisdictional boundaries and information systems.

• Emergency responders need protection from on-site security threats and safety risks, and knowledge of where to find other trained responders and equipment.

New government regulations and funding programs are now driving fierce demand for communications and security solutions that can rise to the challenge. The First Responder Access Card (FRAC) initiative is one example - a program that could eventually provide access cards for many types of government responders. Additional programs and organizations provide their own credential systems to certify emergency responders from other sectors and agencies (which must also be integrated into any security solution). The National Incident Management System (NIMS) establishes an even broader mandate, driving standard communications protocols and command structures for any multi-agency response.

The entire situation calls for a complete system of tools and technologies that can fulfill the functions of ID verification, access control, mustering, command reporting and data sharing, and can integrate with asset tracking and other security and emergency management systems.

The E-RAM Solution from Enterprise Air

Enterprise Air is committed to solving these problems and already offers a complete solution to the requirements listed above - a solution known as the Emergency Response Access Manager (ERAM). The ERAM solution combines the following functions:

1. Identity Verification – identifying any emergency responder, supporting the widest possible variety of ID card systems
2. Access Control – tracking entry and exit into the emergency site, enabling security officers to assign permissions to various cardholders
3. Reporting Data to Central Command – collecting access events, the identity and location of emergency responders, and access decisions made by security officers
4. Distributing Updates to Everyone in the Field – broadcasting security alerts and policies, sharing ID data and access events generated by other on-site personnel.

The ERAM solution is modular and designed to integrate with existing Physical Access Control Systems (PACS) and the most popular Incident Control Systems (ICS) in use today. It combines highly ruggedized portable equipment (mobile card readers and portable badge-printing kits) with a highly fault-tolerant system for sharing data between disparate systems. The solution is architected to be vendor-neutral, highly compatible with other systems, based on open standards, and componentized, so that agencies can adopt only the ERAM components they truly need, and trust them to integrate well with existing systems.

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