SAR Technology - Pre-Plan Response

Pre-Planning the Response to a Terrorist Attack

-using the
‘Incident Commander Pro’
GIS Software

Martin Colwell, SAR Technology Inc.

The events of September 11^th 2001 have left many government agencies, corporations and institutions wondering how to plan their response to a terrorist attack. Obviously a pre-plan has to be developed for each major potential threat, and that each plan must take into account the type and scale of the threat, the potential mitigation approaches and the resources required to respond to the incident.

Once a pre-plan has been prepared the major challenge remains that, once the incident occurs, the pre-plan has to be rapidly converted into a realistic and effective operational response. This conversion is the traditional weak-link, where many theoretical pre-plans collapse under the pressure of the realistic and fast-changing conditions of an actual operational response.

The ‘Incident Commander Pro' Software may be used to convert static, paper-based pre-plans into effective, interactive, operational responses. By using 'Incident Commander Pro' a well-designed preplan can be instantly activated and used to conduct a comprehensive and fully-developed operational response.

The ‘Incident Commander Pro' software has been designed from the ground up for real-life incident planning and operational response. The software was developed and tested during five years of use in real-life incident-response missions. As such it has been designed, refined, field-tested and utilized to effectively plan and respond to a wide variety of emergency-response and search & rescue missions.

One of the major strengths of the ‘ Incident Commander Pro' software is that it combines Pre-Planning, Resources, Communications and Operations into one tightly-integrated operational program. This tight integration permits any listed pre-plan to be immediately activated, without any delay, as the actual and effective operational response to the incident.

To illustrate the power of the ‘Incident Commander Pro' software as an effective pre-planning and operational-response tool consider the following example:

In this scenario a plane, loaded with explosives, deliberately crashes into a hydro-electric dam, destroying the dam and flooding down-stream towns and villages.
See Planning for the Bomb Threat Response

The pre-planed response to the terrorist attack scenario would include:
1. A list of downstream areas that would be severely effected by flooding that would have to be evacuated in the event of catastrophic dam collapse.
These areas would be listed in the ‘Incident Commander Pro' software as Mission Areas for evacuation response.

See Optimizing the Evacuation Response.
2. A list of resources that would be used to respond to the incident, including Police, Parks Service, Fire Department and Search & Rescue teams, to evacuate people from the areas of severe flooding. Heavy equipment operators would be used to divert floodwaters and Electrical Utility crews would be used to repair damage to the power-lines.
These resources, along with their contact information and activation procedures, would be listed in ‘Incident Commander Pro’s Organizations table.

3. A Communications Plan that lists each of the main communications systems, repeaters, radio frequencies and channel ID’s used by fixed and mobile command posts used by the responding agencies.
This communications plan would be stored as the Mission Communications Plan within the ‘Incident Commander'Pro' software.

4. A detailed pre-planned list of field operations to be performed in the event of the dam failure. These operations would include multiple evacuation teams, water diversion ditching, engineering damage assessment, power-line repair, medical response, security patrols, and support assignments, including emergency food and shelter.
These pre-planned field operations would be stored in the ‘Incident Commander Pro' software as listed Operational and Support Assignments.

5. With large numbers of personnel responding to the incident a means is required to
(i) register and identify all incoming personnel and
(ii) individually keep track of their actions while they respond to the incident.
‘Incident Commander Pro's Check-In form will keep be used to register all persons responding to the mission while the Personnel Status Display will display all of the operational assignments they are currently undertaking.

6. Throughout the operation all modes of communications must be carefully and completely documented, along with any potential clues uncovered during the incident response.
All of the incident’s communications will be documented in ‘Incident Commander Pro’s Communications Log. In addition to recording all of the dialogues from each communication mode, including radio, voice and telephone, all of the clues reported in the integrated Clue Log are specifically recorded, highlighted and cross-referenced back to the team and assignment that found the clue.

7. Once the responders begin to bring the situation under control investigators will begin the task of collecting evidence from the site of the crashed plane. They wish to collect all possible evidence, including, if possible, the plane’s flight recorder. To determine the possibility of finding as much evidence as possible they wish to determine:
(i) The Probability of Detection of finding evidence at the crash-site and
(ii) The manpower requirements to thoroughly grid-search the entire crash site.
‘Incident Commander's Probability of Detection (POD) Tables will help determine the appropriate POD for an evidence search while it’s powerful Gridsearch Calculator may be used to determine the total time and manpower required to thoroughly evidence-gridsearch the entire crash site.

Conclusion:
This example scenario clearly illustrates how the ‘Incident Commander Pro' software can be very effectively utilized to both pre-plan and operationally respond to a terrorist attack. While this example does not begin to show all of the features of this powerful software it does illustrate how the ‘Incident Commander Pro' software can provide a highly-integrated, dynamic and effective operational response to a terrorist incident.

SAR Technology Inc.
5268 Sprucefeild Road, West Vancouver
B.C., Canada V7W 2X6
Phone: (604) 590-7419 / (604) 921-2488 Fax (604) 921-2484