A case for standardized communications for point of distribution operations

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-366
Author(s):  
Travis L. Cline, MS ◽  
Kar Ee Ho, MS ◽  
Chris Hood, MBA ◽  
Austin Riegsecker, MS ◽  
J. Eric Dietz, PhD, PE

Objective: Propose standardized communication formats and procedures at the point of distribution (POD) sites to facilitate the effective management and alleviate friction points that may occur while responding to a widespread medical incident within the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Design: Through observation of POD operations and interviews with key personnel in Indiana and county emergency management agencies (EMA), identify current communication practices and propose a structured command and control (C2) framework that would streamline management requirements during a widespread activation.Setting: The State of Indiana, various counties throughout Indiana.Conclusions: Current C2 practices are adequate for small-scale events. However, a standardized approach to the C2 and reporting framework may provide more responsive situational awareness and incident management of larger-scale medical incidents within Indiana.

Author(s):  
H. Golan ◽  
A. Parush ◽  
E. Jaffe

Using a simulated Emergency Medical Services (EMS) dispatch center during multi-casualty incident management, this study explored whether the presence of a separate situation display in a Command and Control (C2) setting might require attention at the expense of attending an individual task display, and how it influenced performance and situational awareness. Overall, participants always attended the task display more than the situation display. However, the situation display drew attention at the expense of attending less the task display. The presence of the situation display was related to improved performance and better situational awareness (SA), particularly in the projection level of the SA, which could account also for the better decision-making performance. Participants may have developed an attention allocation strategy to effectively utilize the information of the situation display and execute their tasks on the task display.


2003 ◽  
Vol 2003 (1) ◽  
pp. 1179-1183
Author(s):  
Duane Michael Smith

ABSTRACT There are likely few that would argue with the proposal that a national incident management system would be of benefit. Numerous articles have been put forward over time, both for and against the adoption of an incident command system (ICS) as the model for a national incident management system. Those in favor of its adoption point out to its many successes, from major wildfires to the 2002 Olympics. Many seem to view ICS as simply another way of expressing the term command and control. In reality, ICS is not another way to say command and control; rather it is a specific of command and control system. The question then is whether ICS, and in particular the National Inter-agency Incident Management System – Incident Command System (NIIMS-ICS) is the model upon which this national system should be based. Most of the studies and papers regarding the use and adoption of ICS have focused on its use within the fire service community. This may be somewhat intuitive, given the origins of the system; however, if we are to truly gauge the applicability of this system to all risks, we must begin to exam it in those other events. It was a series of disasters that led to the development of the initial ICS system. It has been a subsequent series of disasters or national emergencies that have led to the continued evolution of ICS toward a national model. The question now before us is whether we need another disaster to take that final step to a truly national incident management system or are we willing to go there now. In this time of heightened national security we owe it to ourselves to have the best incident management system in the world.


2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S1) ◽  
pp. s91-s91 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.M. Myers ◽  
L. Fromberg

BackgroundPreparing for and responding to foreign animal diseases are critical missions to safeguard any nation's animal health and food supply. A specific challenge of foreign animal disease preparedness and response is the ability to rapidly incorporate and scale-up veterinary functions and countermeasures into emergency management operations during a disease outbreak. The United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Veterinary Services has established a Foreign Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Plan (FAD PReP) which provides a framework for FAD preparedness and response. The FAD PReP goal is to integrate, synchronize, and de-conflict preparedness and response capabilities, as much as possible, before an outbreak by providing goals, guidelines, strategies, and procedures that are clear, comprehensive, easily readable, easily updated, and that comply with the National Incident Management System (NIMS). An overview of FAD PReP will be presented.BodyThe APHIS FAD PReP incorporates and synchronizes the principles of the National Response Framework (NRF), the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and the National Animal Health Emergency Management System (NAHEMS). The FAD PReP contains general plans and disease specific plans that include incident goals, guidelines, strategies, procedures and timelines for local, State, Tribal and Federal responders. The FAD PReP helps raise awareness of the required veterinary functions and countermeasures, helps identify gaps or shortcomings in current response preparedness and planning, and helps to provide a framework to the States, Tribes, and Industry sectors in developing their individual response plans for specific diseases such as HPAI and FMD. The FAD PReP will also identify resources and personnel for potential zoonotic disease outbreaks and large-scale outbreaks, define stakeholder expectations for successful and timely outcomes, identify and resolve issues that may become competing interests during an outbreak and provide a systems approach to preparedness issues that need additional time, attention and collaboration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (s1) ◽  
pp. s140-s140
Author(s):  
E. Liang Liu ◽  
Lindsay A. Flax ◽  
Kelly R. Klein ◽  
Raymond L. Fowler ◽  
Raymond E. Swienton

Introduction:The Dallas Convention Center received over 3800 evacuees because of the unprecedented flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey. A multidisciplinary medical clinic was established onsite to address evacuee needs for medical evaluations, emergency care, chronic disease management, pharmaceuticals, durable medical equipment, and local health services integration. To operate efficiently, the Dallas Mega-Shelter Emergency Operations Center (EOC) worked with the Mega-Shelter Medical Clinic (MMC) under a fluid incident command (IC) structure that was National Incident Management System (NIMS) compliant. Iterations of MMC IC demonstrated maturations in organizational structure while supporting MMC operations that varied from rigid NIMS doctrine.Aim:To explore the use of a fluid IC structure at a large evacuation medical shelter after Hurricane Harvey.Methods:We observed evolutions of IC organizational charts and operational impacts.Results:Modifications through just-in-time iterations of the IC organizational chart were posted and reviewed with MMC IC and EOC sector chiefs. Changes in the organizational chart were noted to improve identification of logistical needs, supply delivery, coordinate with other agencies, and to make decisions for resource typing and personnel utilization. Adaptations also improved communication, which led to timely situational awareness and reporting accuracy.Discussion:MMC medical services were improved by allowing modifications and adaptations to NIMS compliant MMC IC organizational roles and duty assignments. The fluidity of IC structure with ability for just-in-time modifications directly impacted the provision of disaster medical services. Unique situational awareness, coordination of care pathways within the local innate health infrastructure, compliance with health service regulations, and personnel resource typing all contributed to and benefitted from these IC modifications. MMC and EOC IC collaboration facilitated effective communication and maintained an appropriate span of control and efficient activity reporting.


2007 ◽  
Vol 158 (8) ◽  
pp. 235-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Rudolf Heinimann

The term «precision forestry» was first introduced and discussed at a conference in 2001. The aims of this paper are to explore the scientific roots of the precision concept, define «precision forestry», and sketch the challenges that the implementation of this new concept may present to practitioners, educators, and researchers. The term «precision» does not mean accuracy on a small scale, but instead refers to the concurrent coordination and control of processes at spatial scales between 1 m and 100 km. Precision strives for an automatic control of processes. Precision land use differs from precision engineering by the requirements of gathering,storing and managing spatio-temporal variability of site and vegetation parameters. Practitioners will be facing the challenge of designing holistic, standardized business processes that are valid for whole networks of firms,and that follow available standards (e.g., SCOR, WoodX). There is a need to educate and train forestry professionals in the areas of business process re-engineering, computer supported management of business transactions,methods of remote sensing, sensor technology and control theory. Researchers will face the challenge of integrating plant physiology, soil physics and production sciences and solving the supply chain coordination problem (SCCP).


Author(s):  
Anthony Ryan Hatch ◽  
Julia T. Gordon ◽  
Sonya R. Sternlieb

The new artificial pancreas system includes a body-attached blood glucose sensor that tracks glucose levels, a worn insulin infusion pump that communicates with the sensor, and features new software that integrates the two systems. The artificial pancreas is purportedly revolutionary because of its closed-loop design, which means that the machine can give insulin without direct patient intervention. It can read a blood sugar and administer insulin based on an algorithm. But, the hardware for the corporate artificial pancreas is expensive and its software code is closed-access. Yet, well-educated, tech-savvy diabetics have been fashioning their own fully automated do-it-yourself (DIY) artificial pancreases for years, relying on small-scale manufacturing, open-source software, and inventive repurposing of corporate hardware. In this chapter, we trace the corporate and DIY artificial pancreases as they grapple with issues of design and accessibility in a content where not everyone can become a diabetic cyborg. The corporate artificial pancreas offers the cyborg low levels of agency and no ownership and control over his or her own data; it also requires access to health insurance in order to procure and use the technology. The DIY artificial pancreas offers patients a more robust of agency but also requires high levels of intellectual capital to hack the devices and make the system work safely. We argue that efforts to increase agency, radically democratize biotechnology, and expand information ownership in the DIY movement are characterized by ideologies and social inequalities that also define corporate pathways.


2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Helmi Sani ◽  
Frank Baganz

At present, there are a number of commercial small scale shaken systems available on the market with instrumented controllable microbioreactors such as Micro–24 Microreactor System (Pall Corporation, Port Washington, NY) and M2P Biolector, (M2P Labs GmbH, Aachen, Germany). The Micro–24 system is basically an orbital shaken 24–well plate that operates at working volume 3 – 7 mL with 24 independent reactors (deep wells, shaken and sparged) running simultaneously. Each reactor is designed as single use reactor that has the ability to continuously monitor and control the pH, DO and temperature. The reactor aeration is supplied by sparging air from gas feeds that can be controlled individually. Furthermore, pH can be controlled by gas sparging using either dilute ammonia or carbon dioxide directly into the culture medium through a membrane at the bottom of each reactor. Chen et al., (2009) evaluated the Micro–24 system for the mammalian cell culture process development and found the Micro–24 system is suitable as scaledown tool for cell culture application. The result showed that intra-well reproducibility, cell growth, metabolites profiles and protein titres were scalable with 2 L bioreactors.


Author(s):  
Bhargav Appasani ◽  
Amitkumar Vidyakant Jha ◽  
Sunil Kumar Mishra ◽  
Abu Nasar Ghazali

AbstractReal time monitoring and control of a modern power system has achieved significant development since the incorporation of the phasor measurement unit (PMU). Due to the time-synchronized capabilities, PMU has increased the situational awareness (SA) in a wide area measurement system (WAMS). Operator SA depends on the data pertaining to the real-time health of the grid. This is measured by PMUs and is accessible for data analytics at the data monitoring station referred to as the phasor data concentrator (PDC). Availability of the communication system and communication delay are two of the decisive factors governing the operator SA. This paper presents a pragmatic metric to assess the operator SA and ensure optimal locations for the placement of PMUs, PDC, and the underlying communication infrastructure to increase the efficacy of operator SA. The uses of digital elevation model (DEM) data of the surface topography to determine the optimal locations for the placement of the PMU, and the microwave technology for communicating synchrophasor data is another important contribution carried out in this paper. The practical power grid system of Bihar in India is considered as a case study, and extensive simulation results and analysis are presented for validating the proposed methodology.


Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 1087-1103
Author(s):  
Christos Spandonidis ◽  
Fotis Giannopoulos ◽  
Areti Petsa ◽  
Periklis Eleftheridis ◽  
Elias Sedikos

Based on the constant need for safety and operational cost optimization, the air-cargo industry is continually evolving in the context of Industry 4.0. Used wisely, data can help the industry to provide critical resilience that will allow authorities to take proper measures/actions in response to unexpected disasters and secure societal protection. The “INTELLICONT” project combines state-of-the-art technologies blended with novel solutions to improve the loading/unloading time, the structural status awareness, and the safety and security of the air-cargo related operations (prior to, during, and after the flight), as well as to enhance their capabilities related to the execution of their duties. The suggested system is contextually aligned and harmonized with the existing international and EU regulations. In the present work, the remote monitoring and control system for intelligent aircraft cargo containers have been presented from the software perspective. The intelligent containers integrate three types of sensors, Structural Health Monitoring, fire suppression, and locking status indication. The focus has been given to the design and development of a Human Machine Interface (HMI) capable to visualize all related data for better and safer control of the aircraft cargo. It is shown that the system can contribute to making the air transportations safer, environmentally friendlier, faster and with the lowest possible cost.


Author(s):  
Changwon Son ◽  
Farzan Sasangohar ◽  
S. Camille Peres ◽  
Jukrin Moon

Investigating real-life disasters and crises has been challenging due to accompanying difficulties and risks posed by these complex phenomena. Previous research in the emergency management domain has largely relied on qualitative approaches to describe the event after it occurred. To facilitate investigations for more generalizable findings, this paper documents ongoing efforts to design an emergency management simulation testbed called Team Emergency Operations Simulation (TEOS) in which an incident management team (IMT) is situated. First, we describe the design process based on our previous work. Next, we present the overall description of TEOS including representative roles, tasks, and team environments. We also propose measures of team performance of the IMT and propose future research that can be realized through TEOS.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document