Wireless Emergency Response Team WERT

							    EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
            ANSI Homeland Security Standards Panel (HSSP)
                        Workshops on Standardization
         for Emergency Communications and for Citizen Readiness

Schaumburg, IL USA                                            December 1, 2004


 Bernard Malone III      Representative - Wireless Emergency Response Team (WERT)
         501-821-7650    Technical Manager - Lucent Technologies Mobility Team
                         Member – American Radio Relay League
 blmalone@lucent.com
      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                         OUTLINE


• WERT and World Trade Center experience

• Concepts for future Emergency Wireless Communications support




 December 1, 2004          B. L. Malone III                  2
     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                           WERT Mission

                   The Wireless Emergency Response Team
          was established on the night of September 11, 2001
     to provide coordinated wireless industry mutual aid support
                      for Search and Rescue efforts
                     at the World Trade Center rubble.




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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

             WERT WTC Summary Statistics

• No survivors were found
• 33 organizations participated
• 250+ industry subject matter experts participated
• An additional ~500 volunteers staffed the Public Call Center
• 5,039 calls received in the WERT Public Call Center
• 120 reports of a missing person’s use of a cell phone or pager
  from the rubble
• 134 Key Learnings
• 23 Recommendations


                       Final Report: www.wert-help.org/



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         EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

               WERT Participating Organizations
      Arch Wireless              Metrocall                    SkyTel
Argonne National Labratory        Motorola                  Sprint PCS
           AT&T                     NCS                Telcordia Technologies
      AT&T Wireless                 NCC                     TruePosition
         BellSouth                 NRSC              U.S. Department of Energy
            CTIA                   NRIC              U.S. Marshals Service, ESU
   Cingular Interactive            Nextel               U.S. Secret Service
    EDO Corporation                NYPD                       Verizon
          Ericsson           NYC Mayor’s Office           Verizon Wireless
            FCC               Nortel Networks               VoiceStream
   Lucent Technologies             PCIA                 Wheat International


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      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
                                    Operations
                          Wireless Emergency Response Team Locations




                         Coordination Command Center

Network Surveillance & Analysis                    Public Call Center

Service Provider Intelligence                      Ground Zero Locating



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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                               Approach
• Mission of the Coordination Command Center was to
    –   Provide leadership for the entire team
    –   Coordinate with authorities
    –   Manage media interfaces
    –   Facilitate intra-team communications


• Mission of the Network Surveillance & Analysis Sub Team was to
    – Look for any activity on call center list.
       • Registration, Calls, or Text Messaging activity,
    – Proactively screen 911 calls for false alarms.
       • Identify cell site of 911 call.
       • Look at call and registration history.



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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                   Approach (continued)
• Mission of the Service Provider Intelligence Sub Team
    – provide rapid response database lookup information: associating
    service provider names, switch addresses, and tandem homing
    arrangement information with cellular phone numbers


                                      Distribution of Service Provider Percentage of
                                                   WERT Cases (~4,000)
                                 35

                                 30
                    Percentage




                                 25

                                 20

                                 15

                                 10

                                  5

                                  0
                                      Cell Cell Cell Misc. Cell Cell Pager Pager Pager Pager
                                       A    B    C          D    E    A     B     C     D
                                                  Service Provider




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      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                    Approach (continued)


• Mission of the Public Call Center was to
    – Off load calls from 911 command center and other government entities
    – Receive calls and collect information about potentially trapped survivors
    – Obtain cell and pager numbers for missing persons




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      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                     Approach (continued)
• The Mission of the Ground Zero Locating Sub Team is to . . .
   aid and assist in the location of and communication with trapped survivors
   who possess a variety of wireless personal equipment. There is a high
   probability that victims will have access to some sort of wireless device (e.g.
   phone, pager, FOB, etc.). This provides a unique opportunity for passive
   remote location and establishing a wireless link for remote communication




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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
                   Key Learnings - Examples
• What Worked Well
     – high commitment of professionals/organizations in mutual aid
     – pre-established federal coordination function of NCC
     – ability to conduct rapid research
     – Adapted fraud, billing and trouble shooting tools to quickly screen
       call center list and 911 calls.
     – Provided guidelines via text messages for preserving battery life
     – Provide extended network coverage into debris field using RF.
       repeaters, autonomous basestations, and basestation simulators.




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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
                   Key Learnings - Examples
• Areas for Improvement and Further Investigation
     – pre-defined processes, definitions and templates
     – broad language translation capabilities
     – guidelines for communication with a trapped survivor between
       detection and location
     – special instructions for 911 centers for handling wireless callers
     – Handling 911 calls from a 3rd party
     – Identifying Search and Rescue mobile phones
     – Use of text messaging to communicate with a victim
     – Would the techniques learned work in another disaster scenario
     – The possible addition of an emergency mode for mobile equipment
       with extreme low-power and location beacons




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         EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                                    Final Report
•    Subject Matter
       – Describes Approaches Used
       – Systematically reviews Key Learnings
             • What Worked Well - Areas for Improvement - Areas Requiring Further Investigation

       – Presents Recommendations

•    Widely Reviewed
       – U.S. FCC NRIC V, FEMA Emergency Response Teams, NENA
       – COM CITEL (Ecuador, Brazil)
       – ETSI EMTEL (France), Italy, Germany Networking Conferences
       – IEEE COMSOC: GLOBECOM’01, ICC’02,                                         USA
                                                                        Asia                Europe
       – CQR Workshop 2002, Japan Network Security Seminar

•    Available to Public: www.wert-help.org                                South America

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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
                       “Take Away's”
• Keep rescue teams from danger by quickly discrediting false
  reports
• Assuring the public - both here and abroad - that all known
  technological approaches are being used to listen for any cellular
  or pager communication being sent
• Documented Key Learnings and Recommendations in the WERT
  Final Report being studied so that this capability can be enhanced
  and optimized
• WERT is established as an ongoing capability – can be called on
  by the NCS or FEMA 7 days/week, 24 hours/day




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      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                         OUTLINE


• WERT and World Trade Center experience

• Concepts for future Emergency Wireless Communications support




 December 1, 2004          B. L. Malone III                  15
         EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                       Emergency Communications


•     Preferred access to public networks by officials
•     Dedicated emergency networks for First Responders
•     Inter-working with public networks
•     Interoperability among agencies’ networks
•     Amateur Radio support of communications
•     E911 emergency communications – for victims

• Extended communications with victims beyond coverage boundaries ?
• Citizen-to-Citizen ?



    December 1, 2004            B. L. Malone III             16
         EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                   Concept: The Rescue Network
•     Some ability to communicate with disaster victims anywhere
•     GOAL: To communicate with and locate victims
•     Critical when out of coverage area or surrounding network damage
•     Effectively ‘Extend’ the reach of wireless network communications
•     Capabilities may be permanent or temporary
•     Highly portable, quickly deployable, quickly provision-able
•     Combination of hardware, software, operating techniques
•     Network and mobile device




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        EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                          Reference
• www.wert-help.org/                       Wireless Emergency Response Team


• www.arrl.org                             American Radio Relay League


• www3.interscience.wiley.com/             Bell Labs Technical Journal
                                           (Wiley InterScience)
• www.citizencorps.gov/                    Department of Homeland Security
                                           Citizen Corps



                          Thank You !

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     EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS



                   Backup




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      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                            Amateur Radio
. . . . A voluntary noncommercial communication service, used by
qualified persons of any age who are interested in radio technique with
a personal aim and without pecuniary interest.

     – Regulated by FCC under Communications Act of 1934
     – License structure – Beginner to Expert


Among it’s Purposes:
     –   Recognition of value in providing emergency communications support
     –   Advancement of the radio art
     –   Expansion of pool of trained operators, technicians, electronics experts
     –   Promotion of International Goodwill




 December 1, 2004                   B. L. Malone III                           20
         EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                            Amateur Radio


•     Over 680,000 Licensed Amateurs in U.S.
•     Operating privileges from 1.8 Mhz - 24 Ghz
•     Operate communications networks for fun and community service
•     Communications volunteers with local Public Safety Organizations
•     Active:
        – When regular communications infrastructure damaged or overloaded
        – To provide interoperability among agencies
        – Through coordinated organizations & affiliations




    December 1, 2004                B. L. Malone III                         21
      EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                    Amateur Radio Affiliations
• National level participation
     – Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES)  FEMA
     – Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES)  ARRL
• ARES affiliations
     –   Department of Homeland Security – Citizen Corps
     –   Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
     –   National Communications System (NCS)
     –   American Red Cross
     –   Salvation Army
     –   National Weather Service
     –   Association of Public Safety Communications Officials
• ARRL  SOA with Department of Homeland Security – Citizen Corps
     – Raise public awareness as safety resource
     – Training & accreditation for Amateur Radio Emergency Communications



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           EMERGENCY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

                                   Recent Activity
•   Hurricane Isabel -- September 2003              •    Fires in Los Alamos, New Mexico -- May 2000
•   Northeast blackout -- August 2003               •    Hurricane Floyd -- September 1999
•   Midwest tornadoes -- May 2003                   •    Tornadoes in Oklahoma and Kansas -- May 1999
•   Shuttle Columbia recovery effort -- Feb 2003    •    Colombian Earthquake -- January 1999
•   Wildfires in Colorado -- June 2002              •    Tornadoes in Arkansas and Tennessee -- Jan 1999
•   Tornado in Maryland -- April 2002               •    Hurricane Mitch in Central America -- Nov 1998
•   Flooding in Kentucky -- March 2002              •    Flooding in Texas -- October 1998
•   WTC & Pentagon terrorist attacks - Sep 2001     •    Hurricane Georges -- September 1998
•   Storm Allison Flooding in TX & LA - Jun 2001    •    Tornadoes in Florida -- February 1998
•   Earthquake in India -- January 2001             •    "500-Year Flood," N.D. & Minn. - April 1997
•   Earthquake in El Salvador -- January 2001       •    Western U.S. floods - January 1997
•   Ice storms in Southwest -- December 2000        •    Hurricane Fran - September 1996
•   Tornado in Alabama -- December 2000             •    TWA plane crash - July 1996
•   Avalanche in Alaska -- March 2000               •    Oklahoma City Bombing - April 1995




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