FLIR Systems Inc. announced recently that it has received the first production orders from the U.S. Department of Defense to support the Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Dismounted Reconnaissance Sets, Kits, and Outfits (DR SKO) program. The contract is for FLIRs integrated chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) threat response system and services.
This guidance, comprised of various partners including the Office of Health Affairs (OHA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is intended to support state and local civilian first responders, healthcare receivers, emergency managers, public health practitioners, law enforcement officials, and risk communications experts who are the nations first line of defense.
With a common goal of enhancing multiagency emergency response efforts, Mission Manager Inc. and HELP Disaster Management Inc. teamed up at the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Expo (EMEX) in San Antonio, Texas, to highlight their core capabilities for emergency managers from around the world.
Officials of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response announced that contracts to speed further development of two promising Ebola vaccines, known as rVSV-ZEBOV-GP and ChAd3 EBO-Z, could pave the way for commercial-scale production of millions of vaccine doses if clinical trials prove safety and efficacy.
Raytheon has been awarded a $350 million Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contract modification to continue the upgrade of 135 air traffic control centers to the Standard Terminal Automation System (STARS) through September 2017. Implementation of STARS at these airports will bring all of the largest airports and the majority of all terminal air space controlled by the FAA onto the NextGen terminal automation platform.
As part of Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson's effort to enhance the manner in which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) collects and reports statistics, DHS recently released its fiscal year 2014 enforcement statistics from the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
New test results from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) confirm that portable radios used by firefighters can fail to operate properly within 15 minutes when exposed to temperatures that may be encountered during firefighting activities.
A United Kingdom organization has given an innovation award to the Defense Department team responsible for developing and operating the field-deployable hydrolysis systems used aboard the U.S. ship MV Cape Ray this year to destroy tons of Syrian chemical materials.
A fictional worst-case scenario was designed by the Federal Bureau of Investigations's (FBI) Chemical Countermeasures Unit, which is part of their Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Directorate, to shake out any weaknesses in the Houston region's elaborate network of emergency responders. The daylong exercise addressed issues that surface in real catastrophic events.
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and more than 35 development partners, released the 2014 National Health Security Preparedness Index (NHSPI), which measures and advances the nation's readiness to protect people during a health emergency or disaster.
