By Courtney E. Howard
SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Coast Guard Sector in San Francisco and other military agencies are investigating technologies to build ad-hoc emergency communications systems quickly in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Katrina that bring down commercial telephone, radio, and computer networks.
One potential solution is called the Coach2100 satellite communications system from Coach2100 Inc. in Vero Beach, Fla. Military personnel and a group of local, state, and federal law-enforcement teams tested the system in September at the Coast Guard command center at Yerba Buena and Treasure Islands in San Francisco Bay.
“We have seen the pressing need to develop and deliver this kind of system in all areas of homeland security, law enforcement, defense, and intelligence applications,” says Barry Sheldon, strategic business development leader of homeland security at Sun Microsystems Federal Inc. in Mountain View, Calif.
The test established emergency satellite communications links among the Coast Guard command center in San Francisco, the cutter USCGC Tern, a Coast Guard auxiliary mobile unit, and a combined law-enforcement team.
“There is great concern over the inability to provide successful emergency management during a major disaster,” says Byron Sage, former FBI crisis management expert and director of government affairs for Coach2100. “The idea that our citizens must survive on their own for days at a time after a major disaster is of critical importance to everyone involved.”
The Coast Guard turned off all power and communications within the command center, and in less than five minutes the Coach2100 system resumed unlimited and real-time communications across all assets involved in the test.
“I was impressed by the technology’s ability to quickly set up a communications network, provided all participants have Internet access, and maintain the network even when parts of it drop offline,” notes Paul R. Martin Jr., port security specialist for Coast Guard Sector in San Francisco.
Coach2100 originally was commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software to enable remote training and collaboration for private business. Now the company is delivering the technology as a government command-and-control system for crucial communications during disasters. Coach2100 runs on the Sun Solaris and Trusted Solaris software operating systems.
