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Subject: RE: [emergency] CAP and Signatures/Encryption


I agree.  I am talking about simulation to ensure 
that the systems being procured today and tomorrow 
will talk as designed and under stress.  The NIMS 
doctrine of local control matches the reality of 
the majority of emergency management situations 
under normal circumstances.   The NRP is not 
designed for these.  It is designed for extraordinary 
circumstances when Federal systems must come online 
quickly to engage these local systems.  That is why 
it emphasizes Incidents of National Significance. 

Worst Case Scenarios for chemical spills are far 
less complex than a coordinated attack on multiple 
facilities designed to drive responders and resources 
into a particular path of most destruction.  That is 
war, Art.  It is the careful allocation of limited 
resources to events designed to make the enemy do 
as much damage to himself as possible.  The 
President doesn't become a principal whem a 
tanker truck turns over.  His Assistants are notified 
when one is stolen, yes.  Think the unthinkable.  
Analyze 911.  It was a failure of performance based 
on inadequate planning AND communication, not a failure 
of available assets or local analysis of events.

All I am saying is pare it down to a set of requirements 
ALL systems that play a part MUST meet to ensure 
interoperability.  To do less is bad engineering and 
won't meet the hard requirements coming out of the 
Beltway.  KISS.  We have to put this stuff online 
in a short time.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Art Botterell [mailto:acb@incident.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 7:12 PM
To: emergency@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [emergency] CAP and Signatures/Encryption


At 5:04 PM -0600 1/27/05, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>I don't think they will entertain chaos theory during an Incident of 
>National Significance.

Certainly anyone who's ever managed a major disaster has had to come 
to terms with chaos theory.;-)

Anyway, we're talking about planning and design, not response.  And 
experienced emergency planners know to guard against being mesmerized 
by Worst Case Scenarios, which, paradoxically, are often much simpler 
than the much more common less dramatic ones.

For just one example, in a WCS there's no ambiguity about whether the 
situation falls under emergency procedures or routine ones.  In the 
vast majority of real-world emergencies, the transition from routine 
to emergency procedure ripples out only a limited distance through 
the involved organizations and jurisdictions, and over a period of 
time, which means that a significant number of transactions always 
occur between folks who are operating in emergency mode and 
counterparts who have different priorities.  In thirty years in and 
around emergency management I can't think of any major operation I've 
seen where that mismatch of modalities didn't spawn difficulties.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an original and enthusiastic supporter of 
NIMS, based largely on my experience in deploying essentially the 
same thing in California during the 1990's (it was called SEMS 
there.)  The reason ICS works... and has been extended from the field 
level upward over three decades to its national expression in NIMS... 
is that it can be used continually in the world as it is, not only 
for an INS/WCS/RBD (Really Bad Day).

Again, it would be convenient for us if we could make the simplifying 
assumption that we're only devising capabilities for a full-blown 
NRP-activating event... and I'm all for standardization where 
possible... but our day-to-day context is much broader.


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