Updates from the CEMIR
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Updates from the CEMIR
This month we wanted to provide some status updates on many of the projects we are working on. We will return to our regular cycle of essays next month.
Our Report on the Attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021
When we saw another U.S. Congressional Committee (this time, it is the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s “Planned in Plain Sight: A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of January 6th, 2021”), we reached out to the office of U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and got them a copy of our report. Hopefully, there are some points which need to be explored by Congress to make Unity of Effort and Unity of Command be more fully supported at the U.S. Capitol Complex and the surrounding area in the District of Columbia. We also recently forwarded the report to a staff member of DC’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. We are advocating for a “seat at the unified command table” for the district, as a Statutory Coordinating Officer, akin to the State Coordinating Officer in a federally declared incident. You can download a copy of the CEMIR’s J6 white paper for free at our website’s store.
Our Buffalo Blizzard of ’22 Report
We published our “2022 Buffalo Blizzard After-Action Report/Improvement Plan – An Independent Alternative Report” at the end of July 2023. This was produced in large part by volunteers from our nationwide emergency management community of practitioners and academics – and we thank them for their work on the report and their unwavering support of the public’s life safety as being paramount. We e-mailed a copy to political leaders in Buffalo, Erie County, and New York State. We also sent it to the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management (authors of the report ‘commissioned’ by Buffalo - they didn’t pay for that report either) and media outlets. Since then, the State of New York has produced an AAR/IP and OSINT reports that Erie County has produced one as well (although this one has not yet been made available to the public). So far, no one has responded to our report, directly or indirectly. The primary focus of our report was the need for comprehensive Emergency Management in local jurisdictions. Whether the public/politicians fully understand this concept, remains to be seen. You can download a copy of the report (again, for no charge or fee) at our website’s store, as well.
Pediatric Feeding Concerns at Disaster Shelters
One of our founding partners, Barton Dunant – Emergency Management Training and Consulting – is continuing the work on expanding the POETE Process for Pediatric Feeding Concerns at Disaster Shelters, started through the CEMIR who is working with a nursing doctoral student on this topic. Executive Director Michael Prasad is in discussions with the American Red Cross and FEMA to add content material to the National Mass Care Strategy website, and has also provided info to TEEX for inclusion in their MGT-439 Pediatric Disaster Response and Emergency Preparedness course.
The International Association of Emergency Managers-USA Region 2 is sponsoring a “Build-a-TTX” workshop on Monday, September 18th (at 12 noon and 7pm Eastern Time – sessions are repeats, one needs to only attend either) to help create a table-top exercise for the preparedness work needed to support pediatric feeding in disaster shelters. If you are a planner, logistician, exercise creator or just want to provide your two cents into the design of this TTX, you are invited to join us:
Registration is required to get the meeting link, please:
9/18/23 12 Noon ET Session - https://bit.ly/Build-a-TTX1
9/18/23 7pm ET Session - https://bit.ly/Build-a-TTX2
Anti-Swatting - Combatting this Agile Threat
The CEMIR will also be continuing the research efforts - and advocating for whole-of-government policies and procedural changes - to build anti-swatting capacity and capabilities, full-cycle in support of K12 schools across the United States (btw, our ideas will work in other countries, too). If you have a threat/hazard focus which includes reducing/eliminating violence at schools - please check out an NGO group called “ZeroNow” (www.ZeroNow.org) - they do a great job of connecting public safety officials to school officials to vendors of protective/preventative systems to researchers/pracademics and more. Swatting incidents are getting ahead of the technology to prevent them - and the adverse impacts from “sending in the calvary” are unfortunately growing as well, too. Mike was part of a panel hosted by them on July 18th, which you can find here.
Future Partnerships – Coming Soon!
We are in discussions with three groups now – all NGOs/non-profits – to partner with the CEMIR, to help spread the word and expand our audience (not to mention benefit our membership/readers). One group is new-to-the-field emergency managers, another is focused on climate change (one of those threats where EMINT is so very critical across the entire disaster phase cycle), and the third is a group dedicated to business intelligence (yes, there are a whole host of folks who think of Intelligence beyond terrorism and homeland security!). As these get formalized, we will let you know via both this post on the EMN, as well as on our own blog – “The Curator”.
Fin
Please check out the CEMIR’s website at www.cemir.org – we are adding new material all the time. Mike’s article in Pracademic Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School, was just published by them (8/12/23) and it’s a doozy: “Global Pandemics are Extinction-level Events and Should not be Coordinated Solely through National or Jurisdictional Emergency Management”. You can now find a link on the CEMIR website for this one, too.
If you have created any material published as open-source intelligence (including in journals behind paywalls) which has an EMINT spin, drop us a line – we would love to add a reference to our website.