Better Preparations Are Needed
While FEMA, perhaps the largest user of satellite technology in the U.S. federal government outside of NOAA and the Pentagon, was criticized for its overall response to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA senior disaster operations personnel say their ample stock of satellite communications gear met all the agency's requirements in terms of deployment and activation during these relief operations. The agency encountered no snags or operational deficiencies during its hurricane response efforts. Other than an ongoing interdepartmental planning effort intended to bring all satellite resources at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including those controlled by FEMA, under a single umbrella organization, no changes to FEMA satellite operations are deemed necessary, the officials say.
Even so, satellite communications technology would have been even more impressive if networks had been in place prior to the disaster instead of being rushed in after the event, Trujillo said. "Although the performance of satellite systems was impressive, their use has often been limited by a lack of preparation. Had satellite systems been more effectively integrated into our emergency communications network, many of the communications problems that occurred in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi recently and New York City after 9/11 would have been substantially mitigated."
In fact, many satellite services companies have stood up and echoed Trujillo's statements. "In a digital world it is most important to maintain backbone integrity for continuity of local and regional communications when disasters strike," says Gerhard Bommas, CTO at ND SatCom. "Crisis management personnel cannot afford to have communication interruptions with local relief agencies, hospitals or other disaster recovery units."
In a recent U.S. Congressional hearing, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that Katrina exposed serious problems with the U.S. emergency communications network. "If we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it is that we cannot rely solely on terrestrial communications." Martin says the FCC intends to establish a public safety/homeland security bureau to plan and oversee all public safety and national security activities within the FCC. The satellite industry seems to universally support this initiative, but signals that other response enhancements need to take place as well.
Warren Brown, vice president of marketing at Virginia-based iDirect Technologies, says the government needs to look at both ends of the satellite network. If there is a problem at either the hub or remote side, the entire solution is not operational. "At the teleport side, the government should have a domestic satellite footprint ready to go. It should also be able to support multiple networks utilizing the best RF chain for different situations or locations," says Brown. "For example, FEMA could deploy multiple antennas at a secure location supporting several networks that can span multiple continents, link to different satellites, and utilize C-, Ka-, Ku-, or even X-bands whenever or wherever they need it. On the remote site, the government should set up units with all the necessary equipment ready to respond. These units should have commissioned satellite routers, and any end user equipment necessary to manage all their communications needs," he says.
Satellite companies were prepared for the post-disaster efforts, even if their customers were not. Dave Hershberg, CEO at Long Island, N.Y.-based Globecomm Systems Inc., says Katrina set in motion a series of events and activities that his organization has been designing, documenting and preparing for many months prior to the arrival of hurricane season in the United States. Globecomm Systems partners with Agility Recovery Solutions to provide disaster management and recovery services to a number of companies across North America using pre-positioned mobile units as well as on-demand services to support disaster recovery activities. After Katrina struck, Globecomm and Agility rolled out a complete portable communications facility to transmit voice and IP traffic via satellite and also provided call center services.
"Our subsidiary Globecomm Network Services, has designed and deployed many VSAT terminals for various enterprise customers," says Hershberg. "These help standardize our services as well as our thorough supply chain management and logistics coordination. We were able to immediately deploy, install and commission more than 30 terminals into the area, and most were installed within 72 hours of notification. We also supported FEMA activities using government terminals for cellular and data services via VSAT, through our hub at the Globecomm Long Island International Teleport." Besides FEMA, other government agencies were supplied with cellular backhaul services to replace terrestrial networks that were destroyed. Support for their mobile satellite operations also were provided. Hershberg has identified organizational or structural adjustments that might help the U.S. government do a better job in terms of coordinating and deploying available satellite resources and manpower. "I think it is the same old story: No money is available for preparedness, but always after disaster strikes. The government should contract for space segment and to have highly portable terminals propositioned with associated teleports to work with," Hershberg says. "These services should be broadband so that real-time images can be relayed to management along with data and voice. I think they are starting to do this now, based on the sheer number of people affected by hurricanes. Coordinating assistance to many states proved to be a real problem. Different types of help ranging from medical services and food supply to power restoration, to name few, coming from all over the United States have to be managed from many different perspectives such as transportation, licensing, law enforcement, deployment where needed, credential verification etc. These things require a network and database structure that can only be reliably supplied by satellite," he says.
Improvements can also be made at other levels of government. The Global VSAT Forum (GVF) met with the International Association of Emergency Managers, a non-profit educational organization, following the hurricane relief efforts to promote satellite communications, says David Hartshorn, secretary general of the GVF. Emergency manager "is a relatively new profession with different levels of familiarity with satellite," he says. "It's not going to be easy for the industry, because the managers don't usually control the money. It takes five to 24 months to convince them how it makes sense and design a system. The next step is that they tell the purse guys. The process then works its way back down."
Caprock Communications built and deployed dozens of muti-user satellite systems that included telephone, fax, real-time video and broadband Internet access services. These self-contained packages were available as either a stationary kit, a mobile unit or as a stabilized system fro maritime and offshore customers. "Last year, when Florida was ravaged by three storms during the same hurricane season, we realized that we needed to put a series of disaster recovery plans in place," says Errol Olivier, president and COO of Caprock. "For this year's efforts, we deployed these satellite systems at a rate of about a dozen a day, as well as providing much larger satellite-based circuits on a customized basis."
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