The rain was falling and the waters were rising in Collin County last March, but Kelley Stone and his peers remained calm.
Their main point of focus was Wylie, a smallish town in the northeast corner of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex that sits between Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard. Heavy rains had caused the lakes to rise to precarious levels, and Stone, the county’s director of homeland security, wanted to be prepared if the worst should occur. So he and his fellow emergency-operations professionals watched the weather and waited to see how things would shake out.
“We were getting live weather data – raw data – from the National Weather Service,” Stone said. “We were also getting live active data, about hydrology reports for all the tributaries in that area. We were watching the number of feet the water level was going up, watching the weather system come toward us.”
But eventually, tension turned to relief as their computer screens slowly started to register a drop in the water levels.
“The system moved south so we could see we weren’t going to get any more rain,” Stone said. “We saw the tributaries go down, and knew we wouldn’t need to respond to a flooding incident.”
Stone’s efficient, armchair monitoring of the flooding threat was made possible by the county’s new Operations, Fusion and Communications Center. Launched Feb. 1, 2006, the program collects a wide array of data from throughout the region and makes it accessible to stakeholders in the DFW metroplex. Nearly every type of information, from jail records and medical examiner data to weather reports and public health statistics, is “fused” together in a unified, Web-based application. This comprehensive collection of information makes it easier for federal, state and local agencies to put together a “big picture” from seemingly unrelated bits of data – which could be helpful in case of a large-scale disaster or terrorist threat.
“For example, take a radiological attack,” Stone said. “What all would we need to know? It could be public health information – someone showing up at a Dallas hospital, showing symptoms of exposure to a radiological material. And maybe an officer stopped someone that had Geiger counters. Why did he have them? Maybe he was in our country illegally. This is a good way to bring all that information together.”
Sharing information was an especially important goal in DFW, because it is comprised of seven contiguous counties, each of which has its own law enforcement, fire and public health departments. This unique situation made developing some sort of aggregation tool for information vital, said John Gavras, president and CEO of the Texas Hospital Council, which is working with Collin County and the OFCC.
“It’s a real test to try and coordinate this,” Gavras said. “Right after 9/11, there were some problems finding someone who was going to take the lead and make things the way they should be and coordinate it. All the jurisdictions complicated the picture.”
Modeled after the Department of Defense’s Information Dominance Center, a multi-disciplinary information center in Virginia, the Operations, Fusion and Communications Center is the first regional information hub in Texas, and only the fourth in the nation. About $562,000 in federal grant funds were secured for the OFCC, and Collin County added about $400,000 of its own funds for communications equipment, supplies and a 5,000-square-foot facility within the Collin County Sheriff’s building.
A major advantage of the OFCC is its versatility and ease of use. Any agency with a computer and Internet access can use the system after they’re authorized to do so. For security and efficiency reasons, each agency is only able to view data that’s relevant to them – sensitive law enforcement information would not be available to hospitals, for example. For times when communication between agencies is necessary, a “chat” application can be used to relay important information, in the style of AOL Instant Messenger. Plans are in the works to develop a Web-based tool that will allow citizens and those in the private sector to report suspicious activity.
The system also has an automated feature. Each bit of data that comes through the OFCC is scanned and analyzed by computers. When a possible threat is detected, regional operatives are automatically
notified so they can begin doing more in-depth analyses. “As things go up, chatter goes up – local news, national and regional news, information from public health and law enforcement,” Stone said. “If it gets to a certain level, it will send a message to analysts – ‘Hey, something’s going on here.’”
But the OFCC isn’t limited to detecting and preventing widespread disasters or attacks. Doug Kowalski, chief of police for the city of McKinney, said it’s also useful for everyday law enforcement activities. In the past, it took a year for criminal records to make their way into TLETS, the statewide criminal database. Now, patrol officers can know immediately if the suspect they’re arresting was just released from jail the previous week in another county.
“It applies to drug suspects, individuals wanted for a myriad of crimes,” Kowalski said. “It helps in day-to-day crime fighting, in addition to terrorism.”
The fact that everything is in one place also represents a substantial savings to the taxpayer, he added.
“In years past, it would take detectives numerous phone calls and a few hours to eliminate places where a missing suspect could be,” Kowalski said. “Now you can just go into the computer system and see if someone’s incarcerated, or if they’re in the hospital. Efficiency results in economic savings to taxpayers.”
Radio communications are also an essential part of disaster preparedness. In reThe system also has an automated feature. Each bit of data that comes through the OFCC is scanned and analyzed by computers. When a possible threat is detected, regional operatives are automatically notified so they can begin doing more in-depth analyses. “As things go up, chatter goes up – local news, national and regional news, information from public health and law enforcement,” Stone said. “If it gets to a certain level, it will send a message to analysts – ‘Hey, something’s going on here.’”
But the OFCC isn’t limited to detecting and preventing widespread disasters or attacks. Doug Kowalski, chief of police for the city of McKinney, said it’s also useful for everyday law enforcement activities. In the past, it took a year for criminal records to make their way into TLETS, the statewide criminal database. Now, patrol officers can know immediately if the suspect they’re arresting was just released from jail the previous week in another county.
“It applies to drug suspects, individuals wanted for a myriad of crimes,” Kowalski said. “It helps in day-to-day crime fighting, in addition to terrorism.”
The fact that everything is in one place also represents a substantial savings to the taxpayer, he added.
“In years past, it would take detectives numerous phone calls and a few hours to eliminate places where a missing suspect could be,” Kowalski said. “Now you can just go into the computer system and see if someone’s incarcerated, or if they’re in the hospital. Efficiency results in economic savings to taxpayers.”
Radio communications are also an essential part of disaster preparedness. In response, the OFCC has developed a system that allows different jurisdictions within Collin County to radio each other with a minimum of difficulty. Known as an “embassy switch,” the feature integrates the radio systems of Allen, McKinney, Frisco and other smaller agencies with Collin County’s dispatch. “It’s just a way of turning multiple radio systems to act as one,” Stone said.
The switch can also enable communications across the region. For example, if Tarrant County were providing aid in Collin County, Tarrant personnel could connect directly to Collin’s dispatchers. Before the embassy switch, Tarrant County responders would have had to radio their own dispatch, which would then relay the message to Collin County. Up to 85 different radio systems can connect on the embassy switch, Stone said.
The ultimate goal of the OFCC, Stone said, is to have every agency in the Dallas-Fort Worth area completely connected, both by radio and computer. But for now, they’re starting small. Strides are being made towards videoconferencing capability, which would allow regional decision-makers to see the scene of a disaster, or for personnel to talk face-to-face on opposite sides of the Metroplex.
So far, Kowalski said, the transition from separate “silos” of information to a shared database has gone well among the agencies in Collin County.
“Since 9/11, it’s been a kind of wake-up call to some folks across the country,” Kowalski said. “Everybody’s been more acutely aware of things and taken steps to move in the right direction. This information does need to be shared, and shared on a timely basis.”