A new initiative that is linking and syncing utility and state emergency operation centers to coordinate their disaster response efforts, enhance critical infrastructure resilience, and reduce overall risks

THE PROBLEM
Regional multi-state disasters accelerate the need for reliable, timely and actionable information  in both industry and government. Decision makers rely on this information for their situational awareness and decision making. Synchronizing operational information flow between states and utilities at the regional level on specific issues like  transportation closures, infrastructure damage assessments and supply chain resource status are fundamental to  enhancing  critical infrastructure resilience.

THE SOLUTION
As part of its long-term commitment to the operationalizing of  FEMA/DHS ESF#14 policy , the All Hazards Consortium’s (AHC)  leadership and its private sector utility partners began working with multiple states on the east coast to develop a secure “operational information “sharing  framework to synchronize regional information sharing during hurricanes and winter storms for specific use cases. 

Referred to as SISE-net, this initiative  leveraged the AHC’s  Sensitive Information Sharing Environment, or SISE,  to created trusted, private sector operated, secure network to act as an information hub that would serve as a vetted data repository for industry and government to use within their respective decision support systems. SISE-net connects operations emergency operations centers in state and DHS CISA along with industry and synchronizes specific information like weather, transportation, resources, threats, declarations and waivers, state/industry points of contacts, etc… The result of SISE-net is to provide decision makers with the most reliable, synchronized data sources so that all stakeholders are looking at the same data at the same instant and support more confident decision making…faster.