After I briefly read some of the current summary report for SA3, I realized that I need to spend more time blogging strong angel and less time at my day job!

I would like to share with you what happened at SA3 regarding the success or failure of standards based data exchange among the various parties that were collecting, sharing, and displaying GIS mapped Patient data information.

First and foremost, we had complete success in the collection, conversion, and display of the data collected from the Red Cross, Medweb satellite van based clinic, Loma Linda University Hospital satellite telemedicine vehicle, and the Army Battlefield medical PDA (BMIST) from TATRC to the half dozen or so vendors of GIS mapped data display systems. This was, however, accomplished using a very dynamic conversion Clearinghouse approach and we were thankful that we brought our programmers to SA3 since in the end, none of the originally selected formats was actually accepted by the GIS vendors. The USNS Mercy was on a mission and unavailable to participate in the exercise as hoped.

I participated in some great discussions - one on one and in groups - on the issue of trust in humanitarian aid. Trust was seen not just as a artefact of the information ecosystem, but also as a perception amongst those the systems is introduced to. Trust was seen in many different ways - as a protocol and point to point security measure by system designers, as a mutable construct by practitioners and as a complex, dynamic set of social rules coded into humanitarian systems by others. I've explored some of the issues that came out of these discussions in two blog posts. Is technology neutral?

Back in Sri Lanka after Strong Angel III and thought of writing some observations I had on the exercise. See Strong Angel III - Final observations for the full post. Sanjana Hattotuwa

08/25/06 - Friday
Sortie Plan
2508 – Point Loma, Data Collection – 2508
Sortie Lead - Myles Sutherland, ESRI, Tom Patterson, ESRI

The Plan– Visit a variety of sites in the Point Loma area. Make local contacts and collect simulated patient data on a variety of GPS enabled handheld devices such as; PDA, Cell phone, laptops. Transmit data to a data center via the Internet using various communication channels including – 1) Cellular Data Network, 2) Wi-Fi using the EVDO/Wi-Fi Bridge.

Data Flow using the EVDO/Wi-Fi Bridge

GPS enabled handheld w/ Wi-Fi >> Entree Wireless battery powered EVDO/Wi-Fi gateway>> Verizon EVDO Data Service >> Internet >> ESRI data center >> Internet >> ESRI Strong Angel Common Operating Picture >> Virtual Agility Strong Angel III Situational Awareness

08/25/06 Friday

Earlier this week I took the ICS/NIMS training and certification class. Today I spent the morning in the ShadowLite Command Center and observed and supported the deployment of multiple sorties to the field to collect demographic data.

The organization chart for Strong Angel / ShadowLite follow the ICS/NIMS model as follows

Strong Angel III Disaster Response Demonstration

PFO - Principle Federal Officer – Eric Rasmussen

Command – This is the facility has overall control of the Incident

IC – Incident Commander, John Gargett
. Command Staff
. . PIO – Press Information Officer, Jamie Imus

Met with Tod Williams, director of technology, Loma Linda University Medical Center and talked about ways to extend the reach of their MTV (METERV) Communications and Command Vehicle. Designed to respond to emergency and disaster situations, the MTV brings the expertise of a critical care center to patients that may be cut off from access to any hospital or medical care.

Tod has been testing a new mobile video head set that broadcasts audio and video over Wi-Fi.

The plan was to utilize the Entree Wireless Mobile Wi-Fi Gateway to extend the reach of the MTV by having Tod and team venture down the beach interviewing patients.

One of the most powerful visual memories of SA III I have is seeing the Second Life sim designed for SA III demonstrated live on site. I've blogged about this and the serious uses of the Second Life platform here.

There's a number of podcasts I've done with several leading participants at SA III here - http://ict4peace.wordpress.com. Also check out http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/strong-angel-iii for other posts on SA III.

Click on an image here to see a very low-tech proof of a concept: turning SMS messages into news flow. With the help of people from several companies, including Mitre, 2SMS.com and Google, we've created a small demonstration of how citizen journalists could create location- and time-based data that might be useful in any number of ways.
The idea, in this case, was part of a scenario involving a major disaster. We assumed people would be telling each other what was happening in their communities and neighborhoods, and that if they could post such information straight into maps they'd have better information to work with.

Didn't know quite where else to post this, but here's an interview that I did with Internews who are part of SA III -

More SA III posts here - http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/

Sanjana Hattotuwa