Situational Awareness During Mass-Casualty Events:
Command and Control
Barry Demchak <bdemchak@ucsd.edu>, BA, Theodore C. Chan, MD,
William G. Griswold, PhD, Leslie Lenert, MD
California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, San Diego Division and
the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.
Funding: National Library of Medicine
Existing Incident Command Systems
Situational Awareness
• Paper-based patient tallies
 Radio- or hand-carried
 Manually reviewed, summarized,
and posted
• Labor intensive
• Long latency
• High risk of loss
• Inconsistent data
• Low data flow and resolution
• Role-tailored maps and charts, including
trends
• Real-time updating and correlating
• Tiled layout dynamically selectable
• Zoomable and scrollable
• Drill down for more detail
• Real-time geo-alerts
• Optimized for harsh lighting and viewing
conditions
• Role-based data quality visualizations
WIISARD Command Center
Outlook
• Leverages state-of-art
• Data collection devices
• Wireless communications
• Database services
• Multiple external data sources
• Designed by/for emergency professionals
and incident command
• Rolled out and tested in semi-annual
regional drills since 2005
• “Unique contributions to safety, resource
allocation, and strategic planning” –
Incident Commander, Del Mar Drill 2005
• Future improvements
• Additional data sources (weather, realtime plume projection, floor plans,
diverse clients)
• Improved data density/readability
• Platform for advanced data quality
research
Clients
• Patient tracking, triage, & treatment
• Patient tags, First responder PDAs, &
Team leader tablet PCs
• 802.11b-enabled
• Disconnected operations
What is WIISARD?
Incident Command
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Geographical, status, and trend views
Hazard detection and reporting
Real-time updates
802.11b-enabled
Disconnected operations
Incident Command
Network
• Low cost, Linux-based access points
• Scalable, self-organizing mesh network
• 802.11b (local), EVDO/GPRS/RTT
(remote)
• Self-locating (GPS)
Database
Mesh Node
Database
Mesh Node
• PostgreSQL-based
• Publish/subscribe distribution
• Supports disconnected/reconnected
clients
• Automatic partitioning and rejoining