The Secure Schools Alliance Research and Education organization has released the first brief in its new toolkit for K-12 learning institutions and law enforcement – Securing Our Schools – entitled, “Starting the Conversation About School Safety.” This first brief discusses school preparedness, threats facing schools and the critical roles that all segments of the community have in securing our schools.
An annual assessment of the nation’s day-to-day preparedness for managing community health emergencies improved slightly over the last year—though deep regional inequities remain. The Preparedness Index analyzes more than 130 measures to calculate a composite score that provides the most comprehensive picture of health security and preparedness available.
A DARPA program that is developing a field-deployable system for onsite neutralization of bulk stores of chemical warfare agents has successfully demonstrated a novel waterless soil-scrubbing technology that safely neutralized toxic chemicals simulating sarin, soman, and mustard agents. Created under the Agency’s Agnostic Compact Demilitarization of Chemical Agents program, the technology demonstrated greater than 99.9999% removal of the simulants, without creating any hazardous waste by-products.
Piedmont Virginia Community College and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management recently partnered to hold the nation’s first unmanned aerial systems (UAS) conference for public safety personnel. The conference featured expert panel discussions on a variety of topics including UAS usage by fire and emergency medical services, by law enforcement, in search and rescue situations and in emergency and disaster management.
The new “Water On-the-Go” mobile app, developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, gives the public easy access to current conditions in streams across Texas. The new, mobile-friendly website/app will allow users to quickly locate USGS gages in Texas that measure streamflow, stream height, rainfall or lake levels so that users can get up-to-date information on water conditions near where they are located.
The City of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and Intermedix put on a workshop aimed at exploring how emergency response technology would work with predictive simulations to prepare the region for an air quality combined with a heat wave disaster. This emergency preparedness resilience workshop is part of the ONEPGH initiative, which is a partnership with100 Resilient Cities- Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation.
In the past few years, 911 emergency call centers, financial services companies, and a host of other critical service providers and essential organizations have been victims of telephony denial of service (TDoS) attacks. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate is making sure TDoS attacks cannot disrupt critical phone systems.
Reaching out to nearby towns for mutual aid to support resource needs is essential to quickly respond to and recover from disasters. Building on what was learned from previous mutual aid work, the Department of Homeland Security’s First Responders Group developed a prototype application designed to help jurisdictions develop and resource their own capability-based plans.
The Fire Prevention & Safety (FP&S) grant application period opened Monday, 17 April 2017. The notice of funding opportunity contains important program updates and application requirements. The application period ends Friday, 19 May 2017.
FLIR announced the launch of its new educational resource, FLIR PRIMED – Prepare, Recognize, Input, Monitor, Experience, Decision – a free, online tool that provides first responders with best practices for hazardous materials (hazmat) accidents and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and/or explosives (CBRNE) attacks.
