While the satellite industry continues to be lauded for its performance in aiding hurricane recovery efforts in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, the industry must capitalize on its current prominence, industry officials said.

In August, satellites played a prominent role following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, and the timing is right to push for better preparation in the emergency management arena and end the cycle of responding to disasters with whatever can be scraped together.

“We saw the lack of preparedness,” Ted O’Brien, vice president of market and distribution development for Iridium Satellite LLC, said. “We need to present better how different technologies can be used in disaster recovery.”

The scope of the Katrina relief efforts was the largest every seen in the United States, said Greg Tune, lead program manager, disaster assessment/geographic information system, for the American Red Cross. But “we’ve been lucky,” he said. “Nothing we have dealt with so far has been that big. Katrina was an eye opener.”

The focus must be on reaching emergency managers at the federal, state and local levels, where the preparation decisions will be made, Tony Trujillo, chairman of the Satellite Industries Association, added. “This will be a big job,” Trujillo, said at a Nov. 15 forum, “After Katrina: Lessons Learned and Forward Planning,” hosted by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Satellite Professionals International in Washington D.C. “The governments of coastal states and policy makers at the federal level have a better understanding of our capabilities, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort to prepare.”

Satellite communications capabilities remain just a part of the set of supplies that relief organizations need, but “I’ve never seen satellite as visible in a relief effort as this one,” O’Brien said. “Money is procured at the federal level and works its way down. The question is who knows what to do and who decides how the money is spent.”

Educating Emergency Managers

The Global VSAT Forum (GVF) met with the International Association of Emergency Managers, a non-pro-fit educational organization, following the hurricane relief efforts to promote satellite communications, said David Hartshorn, secretary general of the GVF. Emergency manager “is a relatively new profession with different levels of familiarity with satellite,” he said. “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. Then they tell the purse guys. Then process then works its way back down.”

Emergency management capabilities also are very diverse in different regions of the United States, Tune said. “Where we have the most disasters is where we have the best response,” You have to be careful to take stock of areas that have the best systems.” The Red Cross has its own technology training system for relief effort managers so they can deploy the equipment.

Besides funding, government regulations also can hinder preparation and relief efforts. The eight-year-old GVF “learned early that things can be done to facilitate work between satellite companies and relief groups,” but government regulations can hinder communication efforts, he said.

The United Nation‘s Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations, ratified in January, is intended to simplify the use of telecommunications equipment by allowing national rules and regulations to be temporarily rolled back.

The system was not in place for relief efforts following the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, which “was disaster as usual,” Hartshorn said.

A similar agreement, Emergency Management Assistance Compact, exists in the United States as a “potential mechanism for our industry as far as getting through hurdles,” Hartshorn said. The agreement allows states to share funding and equipment for relief efforts.

But it will be up to the satellite industry to make sure to educate emergency managers on the agreement and how satellite communications can meet their needs, Hartshorn said.

And by providing that education, the satellite industry will be in a better position to win the disaster recovery communications contracts that many predict will be awarded so the country is not left with communication holes in the event of another disaster, natural or man made.

–Jason Bates