More than 1,000 stakeholders join N.Y.-N.J. Metropolitan Resilience Network
The program was developed and is hosted by the International Center for Enterprise Preparedness (INTERCEP) at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. The Center is a global leader in organizational resilience advancing public-private collaboration on shared risks since its founding in 2004.
“Through the MRN, members can share a common operating picture of what is happening around us in the region on a 24/7 basis through real-time information feeds,” said Bill Raisch, Director of NYU INTERCEP. “Then as a trusted and connected community, MRN members can collaborate to jointly leverage resources and capabilities to address disruptions from large to small. In our increasingly disruptive world, collaboration is a global imperative and we are thankful that the Port Authority’s leadership has made this global prototype for public-private collaboration possible.”
The Metropolitan Resilience Network has developed two key capabilities to help organizations build resilience and prepare for threats:
· 24/7 Situational Awareness Platform with Crisis Dashboards when Needed - delivered through a unique technology platform which provides a common operating picture for all parties to monitor what is happening in the region from day-to-day to crisis situations. When a major incident occurs, new dashboards are added giving members real-time information from many sources.
· Joint Communications & Collaboration Capacity - enabling organizations to cooperate with others on shared threats before, during and after incidents. This collaboration includes web forums, joint exercises, face-to-face meetings, best practice sharing, benchmarking, quick response surveys, file sharing and other online collaboration.
The MRN’s cloud-based platform delivers 24/7 Situational Awareness, providing timely information on threats and their impacts on the surrounding environment. Current and evolving threats include severe weather (hurricanes, nor’easters, heat waves, etc.), infectious disease, terrorism, active shooters, cybersecurity, transportation disruptions, and others. These threats are monitored on the MRN platform via information flows from vetted government and other trusted sources with alerts to members as appropriate through dedicated online Dashboards and “Smart Alerts” via email and text as necessary.
In addition to providing robust situational awareness, the MRN enables members to collaborate on preparedness, response and recovery activities - either business-to-business or business-to-government in response to current and emerging threats.
“The MRN provides a wide array of information in different forums from 24/7/365 information (very promptly before/following event that is very useful) to the experts at the Urgent Threats Forum to excellent monthly web forums,” said Mary Gardner, VP Business Resilience, Group Risk Management, Zurich Insurance
The MRN’s innovative situational awareness platform is built upon a unique technology (TX360) developed by Swan Island Networks, a leading technology firm focused on advancing situational awareness and business intelligence.
“Using our TX360 Situational Awareness cloud platform, INTERCEP staff have published 100’s of different Dashboards, monitoring a worldwide, regional and NYC specific set of information feeds,” said Pete O’Dell, CEO of Swan Island Networks. “When a crisis occurs, they can rapidly construct and publish a real-time collection and monitoring effort.”
