Timely and effective response to crises, disasters or infrastructure failures requires shared situational awareness on the part of decision makers and timely information exchange between all formal and informal participants. Enabling policymakers, law enforcement and citizens to interact in a crisis is a complex challenge; but one which can be met by a focus on the principle issue, which is the barriers to information sharing within and across secure networks and communities of trust. The combined effort of faculty and students supported through the National Science Foundation Partnerships for Innovation program from four universities led to a conceptual breakthrough. By facilitating interaction of technical and educational components of the SU PFI #0917973, "Wireless Grids Innovation Testbed" (WiGiT) and RIT PFI #0917839, "Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response" (IPLER) projects, an integrated demonstration of an Advanced Situational Awareness System (ASAS) is planned. The ASAS will demonstrate the delivery of situational awareness to disaster managers and response personnel through a novel wireless data dissemination backbone, or wireless grid. Information gathered by advanced airborne remote sensing and realtime data processing systems can, through the ASAS, seamlessly deliver actionable information products to a diversity of users including county emergency managers, law enforcement, first responders, and community groups. This demonstration project will also provide both PFI programs with essential insight from emergency response practitioners dealing with the operational implications of the new technologies,in both urban and rural communities, thus enabling more effective response capability and fruitful future commercialization opportunities. The key elements of this demonstration, evaluation,and outreach effort are the wireless grid edgeware and cognitive radio-based field deployable innovative information and file sharing/communication capabilities being developed by the WiGiT PFI including the innovative intelligent Deployable Augmented Wireless Gateway (iDAWG) with the ability to capture and share multiple wireless transmission media, including police, fire, EMS, municipal, private, cellular, CB, bands and others. Riding on this data dissemination backbone, or wireless grid, will be information products derived from realtime imagery using the Rochester Airborne Sensor Technology for Emergency Response (RASTER). RASTER, operated within RIT's IPLER PFI, includes a high resolution airborne imager, air to ground data transmission, and a realtime data processing system. We investigate the social and cultural aspects of coordination and engagement in a way not previously done. A focus here is also on the identification of formal and additional, informal and non-traditional, actors and their influence on law enforcement and emergency response entities and related issues. An important element in this work is a focus on citizens and non-traditional stakeholders and investigation of new paradigms for coordinating all stakeholders at a crisis
