Common Operating Picture

The intelligence community has been warning for some time about “home made” explosive and chemical weapons, many of which can be fashioned from materials bought at Home Depot or the local pool supply store. Fast forward to Saturday March 14, 2015 when leaders in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq provided the Reuters news organization with soil and clothing samples taken by the peshmerga from...

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Much like military conflict, manmade and natural disasters present similar challenges of uncertainty, complexity and variability. These time-constrained and chaotic decision environments require rapid adaptation and an ability to pivot quickly to changes in the environment. The complexity of the event, coupled with time compressed decision space and the severity of the potential consequences, creates conditions that are unforgiving of error. Given the austere and...

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The relationship between weather and emergency management (not to mention emergency preparedness) is fundamental and can be quite complicated. Weather causes many of the disasters that require an emergency response, yet awareness of conditions is essential for management of incidents unrelated to weather as the cause. For sure, meteorological awareness can have a profound effect managing the extent of destruction to life and property to...

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Crisis negotiation and de-escalation are law enforcement techniques used to communicate with people who are threatening violence (workplace violence, domestic violence, suicide, or terrorism) and can include barricaded subjects, stalkers, criminals attempting to escape after a botched robbery, and hostage-takers. While basic voice communications are of extreme value, understanding what is going on when the negotiator and subject are not on the phone enables better...

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BlueforceTACTICAL was the first product in the world to deliver extensible, secure, and scalable body worn sensor fusion. Combined with location services, AI to the edge, PTT, live streaming video, plus unparallel extensibility, our patented edge compute application platform has proven to be the ultimate adaptive "Swiss Army Knife" for mission critical operations where situational awareness is more than just a dot on a map. While...

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While cloud-based analytics and AI services can provide high-value recognitional services across imagery and data, too often data communications back to the cloud are jittery and quite often denied due to the crush of requests related to the incident, hampering access. Moving recognitional and computation services to the edge ensures access, but also delivers an ultra-low latency solution in time constrained environments. BlueforceEDGE is our autonomous...

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Our nation’s stadiums, arenas, and concert venues host millions of people each year for special events. The majority of these venues will not contend with an extreme emergency during any given year. However, as we have seen in Las Vegas and more recently in Houston, consequences of extreme activity at these events, whether caused by human violence, natural disaster or another factor can be devastating...

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The complex environment of warfare and mass casualty incidents produces multiple environmental hazards that can harm personnel and prevent the accomplishment of military and public safety objectives. The renewed use of chemical weapons in Syria, contaminated water in military on continental United States (CONUS) bases, and a deadly fourth generation agent (FGA) employment in United Kingdom illustrate the continuing evolution of methods and hazards. The lack...

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Battlefield, disaster response, and public safety sustainment is both art and science; it's about synchronizing, integrating, and transporting commodities in a highly "just-in-time" manner to provide maneuver and incident commanders with freedom of action, extended operational reach, and prolonged endurance. As it turns out, the "science" of sustainment is not terribly difficult as it is grounded in basic math and computation, based on real-time time...

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Every day,  our physical and digital worlds become increasingly intertwined, presenting huge opportunities for investments in a future of continuous and lasting change.  This is true of Smart Cities, but also intelligent retail and smarter buildings.  This digitalization of the cyber-physical world is especially promising for municipalities to uncover opportunities and overcome challenges specific to the ever present goal of creating "safer cities".  Critical to...

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