I agree. I am talking about simulation to ensure
that the systems being procured today and tomorrow
will talk as designed and under stress. The NIMS
doctrine of local control matches the reality of
the majority of emergency management situations
under normal circumstances. The NRP is not
designed for these. It is designed for extraordinary
circumstances when Federal systems must come online
quickly to engage these local systems. That is why
it emphasizes Incidents of National Significance.
Worst Case Scenarios for chemical spills are far
less complex than a coordinated attack on multiple
facilities designed to drive responders and resources
into a particular path of most destruction. That is
war, Art. It is the careful allocation of limited
resources to events designed to make the enemy do
as much damage to himself as possible. The
President doesn't become a principal whem a
tanker truck turns over. His Assistants are notified
when one is stolen, yes. Think the unthinkable.
Analyze 911. It was a failure of performance based
on inadequate planning AND communication, not a failure
of available assets or local analysis of events.
All I am saying is pare it down to a set of requirements
ALL systems that play a part MUST meet to ensure
interoperability. To do less is bad engineering and
won't meet the hard requirements coming out of the
Beltway. KISS. We have to put this stuff online
in a short time.
len
-----Original Message-----
From: Art Botterell [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 7:12 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [emergency] CAP and Signatures/Encryption
At 5:04 PM -0600 1/27/05, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>I don't think they will entertain chaos theory during an Incident of
>National Significance.
Certainly anyone who's ever managed a major disaster has had to come
to terms with chaos theory.;-)
Anyway, we're talking about planning and design, not response. And
experienced emergency planners know to guard against being mesmerized
by Worst Case Scenarios, which, paradoxically, are often much simpler
than the much more common less dramatic ones.
For just one example, in a WCS there's no ambiguity about whether the
situation falls under emergency procedures or routine ones. In the
vast majority of real-world emergencies, the transition from routine
to emergency procedure ripples out only a limited distance through
the involved organizations and jurisdictions, and over a period of
time, which means that a significant number of transactions always
occur between folks who are operating in emergency mode and
counterparts who have different priorities. In thirty years in and
around emergency management I can't think of any major operation I've
seen where that mismatch of modalities didn't spawn difficulties.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an original and enthusiastic supporter of
NIMS, based largely on my experience in deploying essentially the
same thing in California during the 1990's (it was called SEMS
there.) The reason ICS works... and has been extended from the field
level upward over three decades to its national expression in NIMS...
is that it can be used continually in the world as it is, not only
for an INS/WCS/RBD (Really Bad Day).
Again, it would be convenient for us if we could make the simplifying
assumption that we're only devising capabilities for a full-blown
NRP-activating event... and I'm all for standardization where
possible... but our day-to-day context is much broader.
