DMIS PROVIDES DOUBLE SUPPORT TO NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION EXERCISES WITH EXERCISE PLANNED, CONTROLLED & EVALUATED BY CRA, INC.

Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) experienced its largest, most complex exercise to date in the National Capital Region (NCR) command post exercise of September 27, 2004. There were nearly 40 Emergency Operating Centers (EOCs) in play working a terrorist attack scenario reminiscent of the Madrid commuter train incident. DMIS supported the exercise play and exercise control / observations capture.

Several EOCs in the NCR were already using either DMIS Tools or commercial tools compliant with the DMIS Interoperability Backbone specification. The announcement of the exercise prompted a sharp increase in DMIS Tools training throughout Northern Virginia. On the day of the exercise, expert users from the DMIS staff deployed to the 13 EOCs with the most rigorous play and provided additional tutorial support. The DMIS Messenger was used extensively with as many as 31 participants from over 20 EOCs engaged in ongoing response collaboration. The Department of Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC) posted attack alerts throughout the NCR using the DMIS Alerts function. There were 13 incident reports generated and posted to mutual aid partners and “up” the government hierarchy. The Virginia Department of Emergency Management developed an excellent summary incident report for the state and posted it to the HSOC. As resources in the NCR became fully engaged, the City of Alexandria, Virginia, used DMIS Specific Needs Request to request resources from jurisdictions outside the NCR. Anne Arundel County and the City of Laurel, both in Maryland, sent responses to Alexandria’s request supplemental to the “official” exercise play.

Additionally, DMIS was used to support exercise control and observations capture at all EOCs and the exercise control cell. The exercise was planned, controlled, and evaluated by CRA. CRA staff used the DMIS Messenger to inject / track Master Scenario Event List items into play at all actively participating EOCs. Roughly 1500 MSEL items, each date/time stamped, were injected over the six-hour exercise. A CRA exercise controller commented, “We had many MSEL injects going to many locations near-simultaneously. This saved us a lot of people on a lot of telephones.” Another controller stated, “We always knew where we were in the MSEL flow. I can’t remember ever knowing that for an entire exercise.”

Many CRA data collectors also used the DMIS Journal to capture observations. One evaluator said, “The Journal date/time stamp is from the same clock as Messenger. That means we can rely on getting our MSEL inject to observed action sequence correct. That saves a lot of time and trouble when we start writing the after-action report.”