Using RFID in Emergency Management Planning
Why RFID and other technologies should be a critical component of evacuation planning
By Edward Minyard
Just hours before Hurricane Katrina reached land along the Gulf Coast on August 28, 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared a state of emergency and ordered a mandatory evacuation. For many reasons, but mostly for lack of means, approximately 25,000 city residents did not evacuate. In the end, an estimated 1,600 to 1,800 lives were lost. Had the entire population in the affected area been properly evacuated, a majority of these individuals would be alive today.
Relocating citizens in a safe, orderly, and efficient manner requires the implementation of a comprehensive and well-tested emergency evacuation plan. However, as we experienced with Hurricane Katrina, executing this plan is a massive undertaking. Besides the obvious challenges associated with the evacuation of an entire population, there are logistical issues to overcome such as the tagging, tracking, transporting, and sheltering of those who have no means to evacuate; including the elderly, the infirmed, and pets.
A critical component of evacuation planning is an all-encompassing information system that can track people, pets, and assets from the planning stage through registration, evacuation, sheltering, and the repopulation phases. An information system of such reach most likely would rely on various technologies such as wireless communications, untethered field devices, relational databases, Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), simulation engines, and asset tracking systems linked to RFID tags/readers and barcode scanners.
RFID, in particular, has proven to be a very effective technology for these purposes. The ability to "read" the information regarding a given individual, without requiring physical contact, can help to streamline the processing and accounting activities, expediting the overall process.
In a field exercise that simulated a disaster, evacuees brought their pets and families to stations to be tagged and registered in the Evacuation Tracking System.
Improvements to the CAEP
To avoid a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans government set out to develop an evacuation plan for the upcoming hurricane season. In the spring of 2006, the city initiated an effort to enhance the City Assisted Evacuation Plan (CAEP), the main objectives of which are to evacuate all city residents and their pets in an orderly manner before tropical storm-force winds associated with a hurricane reach land, and to keep family units together throughout the entire evacuation process. Given its deep knowledge and experience base in the use of RFID technology, Unisys (www.unisys.com) oversaw the overall design, testing, and implementation activities of the tracking system that is to support the CAEP.
According to the plan, residents of New Orleans with special needs are encouraged to pre-register by calling the 3-1-1 Public Information Emergency Hotline and providing their personal and vital medical information. In the event of a storm, the formal evacuation of citizens would begin 54 hours before tropical storm force winds reach land. The city would issue a mandatory evacuation order to the general population at this time.
Once activated, the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) would deploy buses to make runs through routes with predetermined evacuee pickup stops. At these pickup points, medical technicians would make quick health assessments of each evacuee before they board the buses. The buses then would drop off the evacuees at a city-designated exit point or evacuation center.
Once at the evacuation centers, evacuees and their pets would be tagged with barcode and/or RFID-encoded wristbands and registered in the Evacuation Tracking System (ETS). The evacuees then would be directed to state-provided buses or trains. Before boarding, evacuees' wristbands would be scanned once again. This would create a human manifest within the ETS. Finally, the evacuees and pets would be taken to shelters operated by the state of Louisiana.
The Unisys tracking system database was designed around a "head-of-household" concept. All registered evacuees and pets are documented by a record within the ETS. All database records contain a head-of-household field. In the unfortunate event where an evacuee or pet is separated from the rest of the family unit, the system can be used to quickly reunite the lost member by tracking the head-of-household at its current location. It should be noted that the "head-of-household" is simply a key field, designated by the evacuee.
Live field exercise
A fundamental aspect in developing a successful evacuation plan is to make sure it is tested through a realistic simulation. On May 23, 2006, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, conducted a two-day live field exercise – dubbed "Hurricane Alicia" – of the updated CAEP.
A major lesson of Hurricane Katrina was that many residents refused to evacuate because they did not want to leave their pets alone. During the Hurricane Alicia simulation, if the evacuee(s) brought their pets, the entire family was directed to a special tagging station, where both people and pets were registered. The pet registration process consisted of placing the animal in a carrier that had been pre-tagged on the outside. The scanned tag data and the pet's information were entered into the ETS. The family unit was then directed to a bus boarding station. Family unit members and pet carriers were scanned as they were boarded. Pets were not always transported via the same bus as the rest of the family. Because of the ETS database and the RFID tags, however, reuniting them was assured. Once the buses were full, the encoded tag on each bus was scanned. A manifest was created from the data captured at the boarding station of people, pets, and buses.
Through this successful simulation, the exercise planners concluded that the CAEP and ETS could handle volume of about 20,000 evacuees in a 24-hour period, as long as the appropriate staffing of volunteers at evacuation stations is available to aid the city. By adding more registration stations, the solution is scalable, thanks to the technologies and processes employed.
Privacy issue
Even with RFID's proven value in assisting in emergency management planning, it is important to note that, as is the case with all identification technology, government and advocacy groups have voiced privacy concerns related to deploying RFID technology for human identification. A recent paper submitted by the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee to the Secretary and the Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), recommends that: "if the Department determines to deploy an RFID-enabled system to identify individuals, it should build in, from the design stage, sufficient privacy and security safeguards to ensure that the use of RFID-enabled systems meet the Department's objectives while respecting and protecting the privacy and security of information collected about individuals throughout the lifetime of the system and, in the case of the information, beyond."
In its evacuation planning initiative, Unisys is making every effort to develop a streamlined system that does not breach citizens' right to privacy, but rather creates an essential means to reduce the loss of life in the face of a disaster. The use of such emergency evacuation systems helps to identify victims' locations for rescue, unite evacuated families, identify and prioritize urgent healthcare needs, and optimize available resources throughout the evacuation, sheltering, and repopulation phases of a disaster management life cycle. This all leads to the bottom-line objective of ensuring that no lives are lost due to a mismanaged or poorly planned evacuation management plan.
Edward Minyard is a partner of Global Outsourcing & Infrastructure Services for Unisys. He has spent much of the last two years in New Orleans helping local, state, and federal agencies restore communications networks in the city and surrounding areas. Contact Mr. Minyard at edward.minyard@unisys.com.
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