Imagining first responders’ high-tech future

• Software will help the emergency manager (EM) of the future make urgent decisions, undistracted by logistics. When a hurricane in Florida creates hundreds of calls for portable generators, fresh water, and food, an expert system will sort them out, sending supplies — public and private — where they will do the most good. After an earthquake, smart sensors will “phone in” injuries and damage; the results will be color-coded onto high-resolution maps.

The EM, the cop, the fireman, and the medic share a need for game-changers such as multithreat protective suits that are comfortable, light, and slim; intelligent avatars that understand the spoken word; universal translators to let them converse with nervous immigrants; and new learning tools to help them master the new technologies. Responders will need smarter ways to work, team, enlist savvy citizens, and do their jobs if technology fails.

If you think S&T’s researchers reached these conclusions by taking notes and tallying votes, think again. Since focus groups are small, findings can be unreliable. To firm up their findings, the HSSAI researchers turned to a survey technique called the Q Methodology — an intensive exercise that revealed, in nuanced detail, how respondents felt about their various needs. Each responder studied a long list of needs, ranking each need’s priority from +3 to -3. Then, the researchers used factor analysis — a technique for describing how dramatically correlations vary — to reveal clusters of like priorities farther down the responders’ wish lists.

Through factor analysis, an also-ran technology — much like an also-ran talent-show contender — may emerge as an unlikely favorite. When voters merely vote for their favorite contender, the nerd will lose — the fallback of millions, the favorite of few. When voters voice how strongly they feel about each contender, however, their new idol may turn out to be the improbable, unglamorous nerd.

Meanwhile, responder agencies must face greater challenges imposed by budgetary belt-tightening, fiscal shortfalls, out-of-reach costs, out-of-touch policies, and out-of-date procedures.

Perhaps the pop-culture accounts of responder technologies are part of that problem. “Everything people see on TV, they think we have,” one first responder remarked, adding that this delusion complicates matters when responder agencies are appealing for funds. Talent-show viewers can vote with their phones, but responders must vote with their wallets. This is why S&T is appealing to private industry to provide affordable answers.

Some answers will raise legal or ethical questions. For example, will a paramedic be free to view a patient’s entire medical history, or view only the parts that can help her save a life? If a surgeon in Scranton is guiding a paramedic in Pittsburgh, what happens if the link fails?

How do you sue an avatar for malpractice? Before telemedicine makes its debut, responders will need to hear from experts in medical malpractice and privacy.

This is fine with Spahn, who noted, “Anytime you deploy a new technology, life gets in the way. That’s one reason we look so far into the future.”

Project Responder 3 marked the first time S&T tuned its crystal ball twenty years out. It will not be the last, however. In 2014 the digital ink will dry on PR4. What new capabilities, and new challenges, might that report describe? DHS and HSSAI will have the answer.