Situational Awareness

During complex emergencies or events, first responders often face several map-related challenges. Some of these challenges include having to utilize offline maps, data layers, and other geospatial data that contains important details and/or real-time data. During these events, first responders from different agencies, departments, towns, and even states may be called in, which means some responders and agencies will be responding to completely unfamiliar territory...

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Radio frequency management and shared awareness play a major role in the management of any mass casualty and/or special event. Given the inter-agency mashup that these events create, shared awareness of the radio frequencies used by the variety of responder organizations is important so that the Incident Commander and team are not overwhelmed by a constant stream of requests for frequencies used by a specific...

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US Army training per the Maneuver Captain's Career Course focuses intensively on how to generate company level maneuver including Assembly Areas, phase lines, targets, routes, breach points, etc. One aspect that is used to (theoretically) control a company's movement was the FLOT or forward line of troops. Sixteen years later this concept has developed to account for our growing fleet of robots, autonomous platforms, and...

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By Andrew Winkler, Thunderbolt Solutions The use of UxVs (aka Drones) is growing exponentially. Their value is undeniable. For many applications, a formation or group of drones is warranted and can provide unparalleled value and moves towards valueSQUARED. Today’s market is platform centric. More capability means more payload which drives the hard choice between bigger platform or less endurance. Bigger platforms mean more complex operations and regulatory...

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BlueforceMOBILE Command Kit enables emergency communications, adaptive edge ICS services, and inter-agency coordination at the incident scene NEWBURYPORT, Mass., March 29, 2023 (Newswire.com) - A senior leader at an "NFL city" police department recently shared that a major mass casualty event had 1000+ first responders swarm a hastily formed command post proximate to the scene, which was largely relying on butcher paper duct-taped to a wall for...

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WASHINGTON, March 22, 2023 – Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Inc., has announced new partnerships to provide powerful mission critical communications and productivity solutions for the national security, public safety and enterprise markets. Airbus is partnering with Blueforce Development Corp., Common Objects, Catalyst Communications Technologies, Inc., and Exacom to provide a complete and best-in-class solution for customers using the Airbus Agnet MCx (Mission Critical Push to...

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By Morgan Greene and India Sayer Open-source software (OSS) refers to software whose source code is freely available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute. Open-source software has gained popularity over the years due to its purported benefits. However, as with any technology, it presents challenges to consider prior to adoption. One of the most touted benefits of open-source software is that it’s “free”. Organizations can download,...

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By Morgan Greene, GM National Security Markets, Blueforce Development Corporation We are often asked: What does Blueforce do in the Federal, National Defense, and Intelligence Community spaces? Are you guys the that blueforce tracker stuff? Dots on maps like TAK, right?!? Does it do this JADC2 stuff I’ve been hearing about? No, we have no relation or connection to your experience with blueforce tracker, although we...

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During complex emergencies, such as natural disasters, civil unrest, or mass migration, radio communication is often a critical tool for coordinating response efforts, providing information to affected populations, and maintaining public safety. During large or complex incidents, radio traffic can become congested due to high demand, making it difficult for incident command to transmit and receive messages effectively. As well, given the crush of responding...

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The Incident Command System (ICS) is a standardized, on-scene, all-hazards incident management concept. It was developed in the 1970s by firefighting agencies in the United States as a means of effectively managing incidents involving multiple agencies and organizations. The ICS provides a common structure and terminology for incident management and is designed to be scalable, so that it can be used for incidents ranging from...

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