First response future gearImagining first responders’ high-tech future

What kinds of gear will be needed by future firefighters, EMTs, and police officers? To find out, DHS asked the department’s research arm to ask the experts, then apply sophisticated math to discover unlikely patterns. The results are detailed in an intriguing report.

To believe that technologies once dreamed of in science fiction novels, television shows, and comic strips may one day be a reality, or that real-world technologies might make the fantastic devices of fiction obsolete, you would need to be either an optimist — or a futurist in the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T).

To keep dreams grounded, S&T maintains a team of futurists in Arlington, Virginia, at the Homeland Security Studies & Analysis Institute (HSSAI). There, in the Resilience and Emergency Preparedness / Response Branch, analysts explore the art of the possible, helping DHS shape dreams into a lucid, viable vision. “Revolutionary ways of working are often invented because visionaries saw a need and a novel way to meet it,” said Deputy Director Bob Tuohy, who is an admitted sci-fi enthusiast.

In 2011 S&T’s First Responders Group and FEMA’s National Preparedness Directorate turned to Tuohy’s team for assistance in forecasting first responder needs. The result was Project Responder 3: Toward the First Responder of the Future (PR3). The third in a series, PR3 identified the capabilities most critically needed to ensure that responders could meet disasters swiftly, surely, and safely in three to five years. “Faced with difficult budget choices, it’s vital that the Department get it right so researchers explore the most pressing problems and companies develop the most wished-for tools,” said Patrick Spahn, director of S&T’s Operations Analysis / FFRDC Management Branch.

While PRs 1 and 2 (2004 and 2008) viewed technologies as a goal, the new report imagines how technologies will become workaday tools that are easily carried and used. Going further, it singles out technologies that will be needed by responders in multiple disciplines — for example, by firefighters and medics, or by emergency managers and police. In this way, DHS and its partners can make the most of limited resources by solving several challenges at once.

Beyond today’s fiscal constraints, state and local responders needed to envision a future when budgets may be more solvent. “They asked us to forget that, today, everyone’s broke,” recalls Tuohy, “and imagine a ‘blue sky’ scenario, where anything might be possible.”

The researchers were also asked to remember that people, places, and industries were becoming ever-more connected and interdependent. How might these dependencies make energy, water, food, and cyberspace itself more vulnerable to attack?

PR3 was not the first time the Department gazed a full generation into the future. For FEMA’s Strategic Foresight Initiative (2011), DHS futurists flashed-forward to 2026 to help emergency managers understand how their role would be redefined by changes in climate, technology, and society. Every four years, the U.S. Coast Guard conducts its Evergreen process. The Defense Department, through DARPA, routinely looks far into the future. The HSSAI researchers pored over similar studies from government, academia, responder groups, and industry. It was time well-spent. “We used Evergreen as a model for mapping scenarios against potential capabilities,” says Tuohy.

PR3’s data came primarily from comments and priorities voiced in 2011 by four focus groups, each composed of law enforcement officers, firefighters, paramedics, and emergency managers. The responders discussed and debated how their jobs would be transformed by changes in the economy, technology, and society, as well as by future calamities rivaling 9/11 or Japan’s 2011 nuclear meltdown. How would these changes alter the role of the responder as an individual, on a small team? In a vast network? During a typical day or an anything-but-typical disaster?

If you are versed in network crime dramas — or Star Trek — PR3’s findings will bear a familiar ring. If you are not, brace yourself for future shock:

• Start with Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist TV of 1964, fast-forward several decades, and you are on your way to envisioning the law enforcement officer/deputy of the future. In 2031, when an officer needs information, he will have it, as swiftly and surely as the good guys on Criminal Minds and CSI.
  In fact, our future cop will seem blessed with a sixth sense. Donning “augmented reality” eyeglasses or a wristphone, he’ll be able to ID a shady character while approaching him, pick out (and zoom in on) a terrorist, and find a weapon before it finds its victims. Armed with assistive technologies like data visualization, the law enforcer will also be fighting new forms of cyber crime. Wirelessly “plugged in” to a homeland-security network, he’ll spend less time responding to crime, and more time thwarting it.