Verizon Response Teams joined the U.S. Air Force, the Mississippi National Guard and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in PATRIOT 24, a training exercise meant to prepare participants to carry out rapid response work following natural disasters. During the exercise, participants trained for a variety of tasks, including search and rescue, chemical and radiological response and major debris removal, which were practiced amid multiple realistic crisis scenarios, like a hurricane-damaged hospital suffering from communication failure and a tornado-induced nuclear radiation leak, Verizon said Thursday.

More

James Clevenger, director of government sales at Hughes Network Systems, said geostationary and low-Earth orbit satellites can help the Federal Emergency Management Agency maintain communications in the event of a natural disaster. In a commentary published Friday on Federal News Network, Clevenger wrote that FEMA should take advantage of cost-effective emerging technologies to resolve communication […] More

ICF has received a potential five-year, $51 million contract to help the Puerto Rico Housing Department scale up funding programs for home repair and reconstruction in communities struck by natural disasters. The contract entails support to expand the agency’s community development block grant programs focused on disaster recovery and mitigation, the company said Monday. “Our […] More

Axon has launched a charity initiative, the Axon Aid program, which seeks to help cities in the event of natural disasters by using its drone technology to provide situational awareness to government officials.

More

Kai Tang, chief commercial officer at Inmarsat Government, has said first responders and other public safety officials should have access to ‘reliable’ satellite communications services following an earthquake and other major natural disasters. Tang wrote in an article published Wednesday in the Disaster Recovery Journal that first responders seeking to offer humanitarian assistance and disaster […] More

IBM and AECOM have collaborated to develop a new United Nations scorecard designed to help local government agencies and cities build up resilience and reduce risks associated with natural disasters and climate change. Both companies worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the European Commission to create the UN Disaster Resilience Scorecard for the UN office […] More

Environmental Tectonics Corp. has received a contract from the U.S. Army to provide a virtual-reality simulator platform for the military branch’s disaster management training activities at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. The Army plans to use an Advanced Disaster Management Simulator training system from ETC’s simulation business unit to train as many as 800 military and civilian firefighters each year, the company said Wednesday. The ADMS-Command system will be installed at […] More

QTS Realty Trust will showcase at the 2016 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference its portfolio of disaster recovery platforms designed to protect data of healthcare organizations following a natural disaster. The five-day annual HIMSS conference and exhibition will kick off Feb. 29 in Las Vegas, QTS said Friday. William Yasnoff, a member of QTS Healthcare’s advisory […] More

MarketsandMarkets has reported that worldwide governmental efforts to keep citizens, infrastructure and organizations safe from multiple threats drive growth in the public safety and security market. The market’s value to grow from almost $221 billion this year to about $371 billion by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.9 percent over the five-year period, […] More

AECOM has been chosen to receive the University of Notre Dame’s Corporate Adaptation Prize in recognition of a disaster preparedness assessment tool developed through an AECOM-IBM partnership. The university evaluated the companies’ Disaster Resilience Scorecard using criteria such as market impact, scalability and measurable adaptation progress, AECOM said Wednesday. Peter Williams, chief technology officer of […] More

AECOM and IBM have collaborated to design a benchmark tool to help UN member states’ local governments assess their level of preparedness for earthquakes, floods, storms and fires. The companies developed the scorecard for the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction with the goal of helping cities withstand natural disasters as well as protect lives […] More

IBM and the Philippines’ department of science and technology have collaborated to build a central hub for coordinating emergency response and relief efforts in the event of a natural disaster in the Philippines. The Quezon City-based Intelligent Operations Center was built through the company’s impact grant program and will work to help Philippine government agencies with disaster […] More