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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 and crises 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 crisis response and critical infrastructure resilience.
Experience had shown that 80% of operational information shared at the local and state level in not in a GIS format. This means trusted people need to share information with other trusted people first before it become a data feed.
Lastly, the private sector needs to know their information will not end up on government operated or funded systems that are subject to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests from media, competitors, consultants, or other non-operational users.
Regional multi-state disasters and crises 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 crisis response and critical infrastructure resilience.
Experience had shown that 80% of operational information shared at the local and state level in not in a GIS format. This means trusted people need to share information with other trusted people first before it become a data feed.
Lastly, the private sector needs to know their information will not end up on government operated or funded systems that are subject to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests from media, competitors, consultants, or other non-operational users.
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 partners began working with multiple states on the East Coast to develop a secure “operational information" sharing framework to synchronize their local, state, and regional information sharing during hurricanes and winter storms.
The private sector developed the SISE (Sensitive Information Sharing Environment) to provide a trust framework for operational information sharing between trusted users.
The SISE, operated by the private sector under the AHC (a501c3), provides the legal, policy, process, and technical components need to protect sensitive information from non-operational use (e.g. media, requests, competitors, etc...). Operated under the 501c3, the SISE is exempt from frivolous FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)
requests which protects both industry and states and promoted trusted relationships and partners far more than "just data sharing" approaches of the past.
The SISE provides the "individual user vetting and verification" along with the data handling and labeling standards required by the data providers to ensure they know who is looking at their data, for what purpose and for how long.
Using the SISE as a safe and private information exchange, industry partitions their information within the SISE into "use cases" or "modules" that are limited only to the SISE users approved for each use case by the data owners.
During a crisis, the SISE serves up a broad spectrum of operational information that is seen by operations center personnel in state/local government and industry to help sync their situational awareness and decision making on specific topics.
SISE-net
In 2019, industry launched a new initiative to expand the use of the SISE with state EOC's (Emergency Operations Centers) and industry for the upcoming 2021 hurricane season.
Referred to as SISE-net, this initiative leverages the SISE, to create a trusted, private sector operated, secure network to act as an information hub that serves as a vetted data repository for industry and government to use within their respective decision support systems.
The SISE-net Initiative supports:
- Ongoing planning and training between state "public private partnership programs" via the State Private Sector Liaison representatives from 18 states and 10 industry sectors (electric, communications, food, transportation, fuel, medical/pharma, retail, water, wastewater, and financial),
- An Annual Cross-Sector Virtual Exercise for hurricane season preparedness. URL: https://www.ahcusa.org/cross-sector-exercises.html
- Coordinated Disaster Response during hurricanes and large scale disasters.
In 2022, SISE-net initiative will connect emergency operations centers in states and industry and synchronizes specific information as shown in the table below.
The Results
The results of SISE-net was immediately felt by Louisiana during Hurricane IDA in 2021.
The SISE-net Cross-Sector Virtual Tabletop Exercise helped to prepare the State of Louisiana for IDA by connecting government and industry peers quickly to resolve multiple operational issues with fuel, power, private sector resources, and situational awareness in the Governor’s Office.
• Data provided from the SISE to Louisiana University became instrumental and helping the governor understand what facilities were opened and closed in the aftermath of the storm
• Connections made between state and industry operations personnel streamlined the process to get hundreds of fuel trucks from around the region to replenish fuel supplies in Louisiana
• New private sector data partnerships were created with the SISE framework
• Multiple state liaisons provided support to Louisiana for a wide array of information needs
SISE-net provided decision makers with the most reliable, synchronized data sources so that all stakeholders were looking at the same data at the same instant.... this supported more confident decision making…faster.
Additionally, SISE-net's sustained planning and exercise framework brought states and industry together prior to IDA to discuss and test plans, conduct exercises to identify gaps and understand processes, solve operational problems together.
Most importantly, the SISE-net initiative built trust among the SISE stakeholders which increased information sharing and promoted cross-sector innovation to address operational problems they all face together during the disaster.
As the AHC has learned for over 17 years, just sharing data does not build trust between people or organizations.
People have to trust on another, share a common objective, and coordinate their actions while they solve problems.
Once trust in in place, then information sharing can grow.
The results of SISE-net was immediately felt by Louisiana during Hurricane IDA in 2021.
The SISE-net Cross-Sector Virtual Tabletop Exercise helped to prepare the State of Louisiana for IDA by connecting government and industry peers quickly to resolve multiple operational issues with fuel, power, private sector resources, and situational awareness in the Governor’s Office.
• Data provided from the SISE to Louisiana University became instrumental and helping the governor understand what facilities were opened and closed in the aftermath of the storm
• Connections made between state and industry operations personnel streamlined the process to get hundreds of fuel trucks from around the region to replenish fuel supplies in Louisiana
• New private sector data partnerships were created with the SISE framework
• Multiple state liaisons provided support to Louisiana for a wide array of information needs
SISE-net provided decision makers with the most reliable, synchronized data sources so that all stakeholders were looking at the same data at the same instant.... this supported more confident decision making…faster.
Additionally, SISE-net's sustained planning and exercise framework brought states and industry together prior to IDA to discuss and test plans, conduct exercises to identify gaps and understand processes, solve operational problems together.
Most importantly, the SISE-net initiative built trust among the SISE stakeholders which increased information sharing and promoted cross-sector innovation to address operational problems they all face together during the disaster.
As the AHC has learned for over 17 years, just sharing data does not build trust between people or organizations.
People have to trust on another, share a common objective, and coordinate their actions while they solve problems.
Once trust in in place, then information sharing can grow.