ResilienceLessons learned from the U.S.-Canada cross-border experiment

A tornado has just devastated a community on the border between the United States and Canada. Paramedics scramble to bring patients from over-crowded hospitals across the border. Communication blackouts and downed trees force ambulances to weave their way through blowing debris, fallen electrical lines, and car wrecks. The time for a routine trip from the injury site to the hospital has now tripled.

While this did not really happen, it was the focus in April when the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), the Defense Research and Development Canada’s Center for Security Science (DRDC CSS) and Public Safety Canada collaborated on a cross-border experiment with a focus on preparing emergency responders for this type of scenario.

S&T says that the fourth installment of the Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resiliency Experiment (CAUSE IV) unfolded in the aftermath of a fictional tornado along the Michigan-Ontario border — real first responders used real gear, vehicles, and standard operating procedures to ensure that citizens and communities remained safe and received necessary care during and after the “storm.”

CAUSE IV was designed to highlight critical aspects of an emergency of this magnitude: overarching situational awareness, reliable communications tools, public alerts and warning, and access to real time data for decision-making and resource allocation. The program consisted of two vignettes.

The first, led by DRDC CSS, focused on establishing a public safety broadband network (PSBN) for emergency responders crossing the U.S.-Canada border. The second vignette, led by S&T’s First Responders Group (FRG), examined the full disaster lifecycle, from resource planning to mutual aid, and tested how information from social media and 211 could provide situational awareness that could integrate with other data and effectively manage post-disaster response.

For example, during the experiment, information about a road obstruction was identified by digital volunteers on social media and a new route was relayed to the paramedics transporting a patient across the border.

S&T Program Manager Denis Gusty explained how each of the two vignettes were both critical components to achieving interoperability during the experiment, “You really couldn’t have one without the other. In the event of a large-scale natural disaster — in this case a simulated tornado — cross-border communication between hospitals, dispatchers and paramedics would be a central part of post-disaster management.”