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home > March 24, 2008 issue > article
A helping hand with legs
By David Walsh
Special to Defense Systems
STAR-TIDES demonstrates portable relief infrastructure
It’s a bit of a mouthful: Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated
Research-Transportable Infrastructures for Development and
Emergency Support, or STAR-TIDES. But what is termed a
research event for studying disaster mitigation is generating a lot of
buzz in the United States and abroad.
STAR-TIDES is an ongoing effort by government and nongovernmental
organizations to create easily deployable infrastructure
for disaster and humanitarian relief efforts, providing everything
from basic shelter to satellite communications — along with the
infrastructure for government agencies and NGOs to collaborate
and coordinate relief efforts.
Leading the STAR-TIDES concept is National Defense
University (NDU) professor Linton Wells, a former Defense
Department acting chief information officer. He explained that
STAR-TIDES “is based on several years of observations of what
actually goes on in stabilization and reconstruction, humanitarian
aid, disaster relief and building partner capacity.”
Some of the elements of STAR-TIDES’ research were on display
at the February AFCEA West conference in San Diego, including
examples of the seven infrastructure cores of the STAR-TIDES
concept: shelter; water; power; integrated cooking, heating, lighting
and cooling; sanitation; information technology and voice communications
technology.
The project has also been a bargain for the government, Wells
said. “Less than $20,000 in U.S. government investment generated
more than $700,000 in private-sector engagement.”
“This is a research project, so it fits within NDU’s mission,” he
said. “And it’s [a] coalition of the willing involving lots of different
people.” DOD is participating along with several other interested
organizations, Wells said, stressing that STAR-TIDES is not a government
project. Affiliates include Johns Hopkins University, San
Diego State’s Visualization Lab and Singapore’s Nan Yang
University.
One of the key differences between STAR-TIDES and traditional
emergency response solutions, its proponents say, is that many of
the elements demonstrated were put together with low-cost commercial
components. That includes small, $200 generators from
Home Depot; water-purification, cooking and air-filtration equipment;
and compact satellite communications systems. Some demonstration
components, such as battery chargers and food cookers,
were solar-powered.
Several quick-assembly tents and hard-walled structures also were
on display, including the Hexayurt, a durable, rigid shelter made
from thermal insulation materials and other components that costs
less than $200 retail. Untrained volunteers using a simple diagram
can assemble them.
The project is also investigating how to provide information technology
infrastructure for relief efforts. Coby Leuschke, founder of
CivMil.org, which provides a collaboration site for STAR-TIDES
and other information resources, said, “We are trying to align our
use of STAR-TIDES.net with a Web system that could be used to
scale and support real-world responses so they are not mutually
exclusive but may have slightly different needs.”
Much of the software infrastructure supporting STAR-TIDES is
open source, Leuschke said. “It gives us the flexibility to engage with
other communities of interest with less worry of licensing issues and
costs,” he said. “And [it] gives us the potential flexibility to add features
or make changes based on emergent needs.”
A purely military disaster response, in addition to being slow, is
sometimes needlessly regulation-bound, Wells said. For example,
disposition of shelters and other survival elements in the aftermath
of a crisis may be controlled by custody cards. Under STARTIDES
precepts, equipment can remain with target populations,
Wells said.
In October, a STAR-TIDES model was unveiled at NDU to
officials from the National Guard Bureau, Air Force, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Red Cross and
Homeland Security Department. Guests included Gen. William
“Kip” Ward, head of Africom, DOD’s combatant command for
Africa.
Within five hours, shelters were erected and satellite communications
up and running. So was video teleconferencing,
enabling tent-to-tent and tent-to-remote area participation and
analysis.
Communications — situational awareness and speedy data sharing
— is “the critical enabler of everything else that happens,” Wells
said. “People need to know which bridges are out,
where the capacity is to get rice to where it’s needed”
and so forth. And information exchange
“has to be independent of the power grid
because it’s not likely to be there — so you
can’t rely on cell phones or plug-in power.”
Portable satellite communications are one
option. The version seen at the October demo, made by
GATR, was highly portable and inflatable. “The idea
is that you put the 80-pound dish in a duffel bag
and carry it with your team on commercial
flights,” said Vinay Gupta, a member of the
STAR-TIDES team and head of the Hexayurt
Project. Then you transport it to the disaster zone,
set it up, and you have comms and data back home from Day
One.”
Ordinarily, “a conventional dish weighs 700 pounds, comes
on a separate plane and sits in customs for two weeks before you can
get it to the site — if you can get it to the site,” Gupta said. “It’s a
game-changing product in terms of humanitarian comms.”
Other satellite communications systems that STAR-TIDES
demonstrated are meant to be hiked into remote locales in backpacks,
powered by solar cells or batteries, and connected to a satellite
at low bandwidth, “setting up a Wi-Fi cloud around itself for a
few hundred feet,” Wells said. “You could get in there and at least let
people know what’s happening and begin to coordinate responses.”
Also important, Wells said, was bridging technology that enables
interoperability: “It lets first responders use their own equipment
and the guys who fly in use theirs.” Patch gear would, for example,
connect local police using handheld units with satcomm-equipped
FEMA officials.
STAR-TIDES participants are studying the National Guard’s AC-
1000 bridge, Wells said. And although compatibility is not 100 percent,
“we’re getting to the stage where it’s vastly different than it
was” after the 2001 terrorist attacks, he added.
For now, voice over IP “lets you take the audio out of the handheld
radio, turn it into packets, route it through the bridge and
send it to the inputted satellite — where it gets turned back into
whatever the satellite needs,” Wells said. “That way, you don’t
have to rip all the equipment from first responders’ hands the
way you used to.”
Wells said this and similar potential solutions largely redressed
tragic deficiencies encountered during the 2001 attacks and during
Hurricane
Katrina relief efforts.
Gupta said some
STAR-TIDES iterations
might integrate a VOIP-based
telephone routing board, so “you
have a way of reaching people on their
old phone numbers even if the phone system is wiped out. You
take their old number, add a prefix, dial it into a VOIP phone or
other working telephone — perhaps outside of the disaster area —
and it either takes a message or reroutes the call to the new number
if one has been established.”
Wells could not say when any production versions might appear
or predict STAR-TIDES’ impact on actual emergencies. There are
too many unknowns and variables: which actors here or abroad
would be involved and to what extent, which configurations of the
seven infrastructure packages would be appropriate, and which
agencies or departments at the federal and state levels would take
the lead in a given event.
However, Wells said, with millions of dollars available for implementing
various aspects, STAR-TIDES is way beyond proof-of-concept.
“The National Guard has 50 or 52 vehicles deployed or ready to
go, one for each state and two for California and New York. You go to
the scene and hook together these different types of systems: local and
state police, fire and medical people. These are actually being fielded.”
Interoperability, diminishing bandwidth and other crisis-mitigation
challenges will be addressed in STAR-TIDES’ next round.
“We’re looking at this for this coming July — the Golden Phoenix
exercise in San Diego,” Wells said. Led by the Customs and Border
Protection agency, it will also involve Marine Corps reserve units
and state and local first responders, he added. “This is an opportunity
to see how well these [technologies] work together.”
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