Communications Inter-Operability in a Crisis

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Large scale emergencies and disasters require the emergency services to work together in nonstandard ways. Thus we should be accustomed to the idea that emergency responders need to communicate with one another, wherever the emergency or disaster has happened – including underground. Yet inquiries into large scale emergencies and disasters always seem to highlight communication difficulties. It is hard to believe that modern communications and information technology are insufficient to solve this problem. There must, therefore, be other obstacles. Much has been written on the subject of the barriers to communication within, and between, individual responder organizations, including technological, cultural, political and economic barriers. Likewise, many have postulated ways and means to overcome those barriers. However, there has been little written on the positive forces (or drivers) for communication between the services.

This Whitehall Report seeks to redress this balance. It suggests that perhaps it is not the barriers that are too great but that the drivers are insufficiently strong or focused.

Authors

Dr Sandra Bell is the Director of RUSI’s Homeland Security & Resilience Department. She received a PhD at the Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University. From 1991 – 2004 she was a scientist at the Defence Research Agency, which subsequently became QinetiQ, Europe’s largest Defence and Security science and technology organization.

Rebecca Cox was a researcher in RUSI’s Homeland Security & Resilience Department from 2004 – 2006. She has a BA (Hons) in Politics and Law and recently completed an MA in International Security Studies and Terrorism at the University of Reading.

Executive Summary

The London Assembly report into the bombings of the London mass transport system on 7 July 2005 stated that multiple communications failures hampered the response.

This seemed to come as a surprise. Yet, the inquiries into most large scale emergencies and disasters highlight communication difficulties between emergency services. For example, the inquiries into the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the 1989 Hillsborough Football Disaster, the 1988 Clapham Junction Railway Disaster and the 1987 King’s Cross Underground Fire all recommended that emergency services should review and improve communications between themselves.

All large scale emergencies and disasters require the emergency services to work together in non-standard ways. We should therefore be accustomed to the idea that emergency responders need to communicate with one another, wherever the emergency or disaster has happened – including underground.

It is hard to believe that modern communications and information technology are insufficient to solve this problem. Therefore, there must be other obstacles. Much has been written on the subject of the barriers to communication within, and between, individual responder organizations including technological, cultural, political and economic barriers. Likewise, many have postulated ways and means to overcome those barriers. However, there has been little written on the positive forces (or drivers) for communication between the services.

This Whitehall Report seeks to redress this balance. It is suggested that perhaps it is not the barriers that are too great, but rather that the drivers are insufficiently strong or focused.

An analysis of the response to past disasters highlights three main issues:

Information remaining in organizational silos.
A reliance on brittle information flows, which is suited for day-to-day circumstances but not for crisis situations.
A lack of timely information about the environment where the emergency or disaster has happened.

Each of these issues relates to the ‘joint response’. Therefore the ownership of the joint response is important.

The Report investigates this by looking at the structure of the UK emergency and disaster response capability and by investigating the joint command and control organization. A conceptual model, developed by the US based ‘Command and Control Research Programme’, is used to describe the current organization and the type of organization that could be achieved with the use of modern information and communications technology. The aim being to see if better communication, within the current organizational constraints, could have prevented the sorts of response failures highlighted in the real life disaster inquiries.

The Report demonstrates that significant advantages could accrue. However, the Report also demonstrates that such advantages are dependent on the different organizations, with very different cultures, being held together by an external influence. Such an external influence or ‘glue’ can, in part, be developed before the incident in the shape of prior knowledge: common education and training, doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures. But, the event-specific element of this guidance needs to be reflected in a joint ‘Command Intent’ or common purpose as individuals need to be united in their efforts.

However, the Report identifies that, within the current UK emergency and disaster context, there is no single body with ownership of the joint response. This has resulted in the sorts of communications failures cited by the disaster inquiries within a crisis situation and incoherent strategy when attempting to implement the recommendations of the failures post disaster. The Report identifies that, in fact, the latter has resulted in a timeline extending well beyond eighteen years.

However, on a positive note, the Report identifies that as many emergency responder communities are voluntarily adopting compatible technology for their own internal information and communications use, there now exists the potential to transform UK emergency and disaster response.

The opportunities are identified as falling into three main areas:

Joint Working
Unified Multi-agency Command and Control
Joint Information Systems

The Report makes three recommendations:

1. That there should be a unified communications policy encompassing all responder communities that ensures inter-operability.

2. That each response management tier – bronze, silver and gold – should have an ‘Incident Commander’ to take ownership of the Command Intent.

3. That multi-agency information flow requirements should be defined so that the platform on which the information systems are to operate are designed for purpose, rather than the systems being designed to fit the platform on which they have to operate.

Index