News
The
Public Security Innovation Center and Unified Incident Command and
Decision Support Middleware Join to Improve Emergency Management
Information Innovation and Sharing while Expanding Public Security
Collaboration Between the Netherlands and the United States.
Achieving innovation and assuring information sharing are often
conflicting objectives in emergency management and public security
technologies today. Innovation intends to improve specific operational
needs and individual or organizational performance. By doing so,
innovation can lead to unique data management – sometimes called a
“stovepipe” of information which effectively prevents information
sharing. Balancing innovation that creates new data sources and forms
with information sharing that enables multi-organizational and
multi-jurisdictional emergency planning and response is the focus of a
new collaboration between two programs in the United States and the
Netherlands.
The Public Security Innovation Center (PSIC) of the Netherlands is a
test bed and demonstration center for public security technologies that
is an economic development initiative funded by the Netherlands Ministry
of Economic Affairs and the City of The Hague for the purpose of
supporting innovative use of commercial technologies in public security.
The PSIC is located in the World Forum in The Hague and includes more
than 20 member companies which represent a wide range of information
management and physical security technologies. Central to the innovation
supported by the PSIC is the application of all forms of technology to
deliver more effective emergency decision-making for natural,
technological, and terrorist events – while promoting an information
sharing environment.
In the United States, the Unified Incident Command and Decision Support
(UICDS) is “middleware” that provides a standards-based, open
architecture, web services data exchange framework designed to enable
information sharing among disparate homeland security technologies from
commercial, government, academic, and volunteer organizations. UICDS is
sponsored by the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, and is being executed through a
contract with prime contractor Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC) [NYSE:SAI]. Central to the information exchange
enabled by UICDS is the adoption of royalty-free middleware by
technology providers to enable their integration. There are more than
300 technology providers that are participating in the UICDS program and
more than 75 have downloaded the software development kit.
The PSIC fosters innovation and UICDS provides information sharing.
Together, collaboration between these programs can make information
sharing an inherent part of technology innovation.
The PSIC has selected UICDS as its information sharing architecture and
will implement the UICDS pilot system throughout the summer of 2009 in
preparation for the formal opening of the PSIC in October 2009. As a
requirement of membership in the PSIC, companies must adopt UICDS and
use the UICDS software development kit to integrate with the UICDS
middleware. This will result in each participating application being
able to exchange information with other UICDS-compliant technologies,
thus producing improved information sharing and decision support for
end-users in the emergency response community.
Beginning in October, the PSIC in the Netherlands and the UICDS team in
the United States intend to conduct joint, transnational demonstrations
for the purpose of fostering innovation and creating incentives for
business development among the UICDS participants and PSIC members.
These demonstrations will be conducted in conjunction with homeland
security collaboration efforts of the two countries.
The benefits of the PSIC and its use of UICDS are significant for all
the parties involved.
For UICDS, the PSIC provides a European gateway to innovative
companies that can bring solutions to the U.S. which, by participating
in the PSIC and using UICDS, become immediately interoperable across the
Atlantic.
For the PSIC, UICDS immediately provides a standardized way to
share information that will allow the member companies to focus on
innovating support for emergency management rather than constructing
data exchange mechanisms.
For both countries, the investment of government and the private
sector in technical solutions is enhanced and extended by innovative
technologies built on the foundation of UICDS information sharing which
helps better to deliver valuable information to responders and managers.
For companies participating in both the PSIC and UICDS, the
combination of the PSIC’s adoption of UICDS provides access to new
marketplaces, opportunities for company-to-company innovation and
collaboration, a showcase in Europe, a cost-free middleware standard
that eliminates uncertainty in implementations, and a channel for
improved corporate teaming and expanded business opportunities in both
the U.S. and Europe.
Finally, while the PSIC and UICDS are focused on technology innovations
by commercial, academic, government, and volunteer organizations, the
PSIC and UICDS provide a new topic for collaboration between the
Netherlands and the United States through formal national government
exchanges. These discussions will support the technology organizations
by providing a forum for governments to express their latest technology
needs for response and resiliency in crisis. At the same time,
technologists will have access to government end-users to explain their
roadmaps for development and to guide the marketplace in planning for
the future. These exchanges will further innovation and economic
development.
UICDS is the pathway along which critical information flows before,
during, and after an emergency. The PSIC in the Netherlands, by adopting
the UICDS middleware, allows technology providers to achieve innovation
while assuring information sharing for both national and international
improvement of emergency management.
For further information:
On UICDS contact James W. Morentz, Ph.D., UICDS Outreach
Director, Science Applications International Corporation, at
703-589-3706 or
morentzj@saic.com.
In PSIC contact Léon de Bruijn, PSIC Managing Director, at +31 6
4271 6865 or
leondebruijn@psic.eu.
For the Department of Homeland Security, Directorate of Science and
Technology, contact Lawrence Skelly, Deputy Director, DHS S&T
Infrastructure and Geophysical Division,
at
lawrence.skelly@dhs.gov or Nabil Adam,
UICDS Technical Lead, at
nabil.adam@dhs.gov.
Project office | Address: Johan van Oldenbarneveltlaan 9, 2582 NE The Hague, The Netherlands | Phone: +31 70 3228 050 Fax: +31 70 3228 049 | E-mail: info@psic.eu