Emergency Management
The challenges associated with incident response in today's complex environment has tasked emergency managers with the need to adhere to best practices in responding to incidents, but first must address a variety of challenges. The coordination and authorization of personnel from multiple agencies is a major task, and challenge of the emergency manager.  When multiple agency personnel arrive on scene, they appear with a variety of identification sources and badges. They require immediate authorization, using a system that authenticates them on-site, regardless of their agency or jurisdictional affiliation. A uniform standard for personnel authentication is currently lacking the structure of most emergency management organizations.  VUANCE'S (FORMERLY SUPERCOM) Incident Response Management Systems (IRMS) use smart card technology as a cornerstone, answering these issues as they were highlighted in Homeland Security Presidential Directives 5, 8, and 12. 

Currently, tracking individuals in and out of an incident/disaster site is almost impossible, making compliance to NIMS/ICS requirements difficult. Tracking of personnel, to include first responders, the public, and the media inside and outside of a scene is very difficult as it is now largely a manual operation, if performed at all. This tracking can be performed with simplicity, ease, and rapidly by using our smart-card, Pure-RF, S-DSMS, and Dynagate applications; giving the emergency manager control over the personnel and resources responding to the emergency.

When communications and power infrastructure are down, as they often are, managing and securing the incident/disaster site becomes largely a manual function; draining valuable time and resources. Power sources and communications infrastructure can be knocked out by the incident/disaster itself, making control over the scene extremely difficult. The components of VUANCE'S (FORMERLY SUPERCOM) IRMS are designed to be used in a stand-alone environment, without any existing infrastructure to ensure smooth operation of emergency management regardless of the extremity of the circumstances, remote/rural location, or lack of power or communications.

The first step taken by many organizations is compliance with a consistent ICS (Incident Command System) approach. The next challenge becomes an accountability system, which provides fast and accurate authorization of personnel from many agencies and jurisdictions, in an effective, consistent, secure, accurate, on-site manner. Good accountability systems, though, must provide more than on-site authorization of a credential. Public safety officials are responsible for the incident scene, and must protect it from further damage, danger or contamination, as both public safety and liability are at risk.

High impact incidents (natural or man-made) have become similar to crime scenes in that the integrity of the scene must be ensured and protected, with detailed records kept and archived.
Containing and controlling an incident site is a basic obligation of today's first responder, in a time when yellow crime scene tape and manual inspection of identification badges are not enough.

NIMS guidelines provide oversight, but good technology is required to support the efforts of local first responders, technology that is weather and disaster-proof, and that is capable of securing perimeters and authorizing personnel credentials for site entry and exit. This technology must be feature rich, but designed for field disaster use and require no external sources of power or communications.

This technology, the Incident Response Management Systems are available today, from VUANCE (FORMERLY SUPERCOM), Inc.; and consist of:

Smart-Disaster Site Management Systems
operate with a robust 900 MHz line of sight communications and battery powered tripod checkpoints to assure operation in any condition, regardless of the lack of infrastructure.

The Dynagate
provides battery-powered smart-card access control units with or without biometric verification; which works off-line or using an on-board Cisco Router to communicate wirelessly to our Smart Gate software.

Handheld readers
can verify smart cards, 2D barcodes (Driver’s Licenses), and fingerprints in a small, lightweight reader.

Pure-RF Radio Frequency Identification Tags
are small, motion activated ID tags that can track movements within areas for total, real-time accountability.

Communications Interoperability Bridges 
give an incident commander the ability to link radio and telephonic communications devices from any organization together, to ensure a constant flow of communication; in a small, portable solution.

Mobile Credentialing and Enrollment Stations
give the users the ability to issue smart-card credentials and database updates on-scene and in a mobile environment, to ensure the security and accountability of a site and all personnel responding therein.

Smart Cards
give organizations the ability to identify personnel in a completely secure way, which not only curbs counterfeiting and impersonation, but also allows important data on the cardholder to be stored on the card itself, thus allowing rapid access of security, medical, and notification information for first responders and incident commanders.

Smart Gate and Magna databases
are secure database applications that tie these solutions into the command center software so that the scene can be monitored, secured, and controlled on any Windows-based computer.