A Message about Data Interoperability from our Founder & CEO
Hi, Folks – Here’s an old picture of me as a smokejumper. I was trained by the US Forest Service at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base (NCSB) in Winthrop, Washington – ‘the birthplace of smokejumping’. Some of you may know that the Incident Command System (ICS) was developed in the 1970’s following massive wildfires in California, which resulted in the loss of life and extensive property damage. Today, while ICS provides for a clear chain of command and standardized approach to incident management, work still needs to be done on the technology implementation front to enable full data interoperability, especially during multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional operations.
I still have my yellow fire shirt with bright orange, fire-retardant stains on it from a close call during a bomber drop on a wildfire in the Yukon. I keep it as a reminder of the requirement to ensure that the right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing at all times in emergency response situations. As a foundational element of crisis and emergency management, data interoperability not only enables better decision-making – it helps to keep first responders safe.
