Guest post from Ron Langhelm of the Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) Office of Mission and Capability Support shares how S&T and two state government partners tested the new Community Lifeline Status System (CLSS) during a live disaster simulation exercise.
When disaster strikes a community, information is the most important tool emergency managers (EMs) need. What are the impacts to a community’s critical services? Where is the damage most critical? Real-time answers enable EMs to better assess community impacts that help focus rapid responses.
S&T recognized that providing real time information to EMs across stricken areas would save more lives from the get-go, so we innovated a tool that takes uncertainty out of determining disaster impact – the Community Lifeline Status System (CLSS).
Developed with our private-sector partner G&H International, CLSS is a platform that centralizes up-to-date crisis information and connects emergency responders to it in real time. Using CLSS, EMs can access data about a community’s most fundamental services, or lifelines, such as water, power, and food supply, that may be affected during a crisis. CLSS measures the viability of these lifelines through a green, yellow, or red icon. Green indicates there has been little impact to the lifeline and it is providing citizens with the resources necessary for survival. Red means the lifeline has been severely damaged, placing communities at risk. Live status updates about lifelines from across a disaster-stricken region provide EMs with the information they need to track changing crisis impacts, then assess, prioritize, and address critical needs, with the goal of returning a community lifeline to green.
To ensure readiness for our upcoming nationwide launch of the CLSS tool in spring 2025, S&T and partners from the Maryland and Virginia Departments of Emergency Management (MDEM and VDEM respectively), with assistance from the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC), recently conducted a full-day, simulated exercise to test the CLSS platform.
This CLSS Multi-State Exercise, hosted at the Maryland Emergency Operations Center in Hanover with VDEM participants in Richmond, replicated a large-scale disaster in real time. Emergency personnel in Maryland and Virginia spent the day tracking disaster impacts and coordinating response efforts over the first 72 hours after the crisis occurred. The objective of the exercise was to test and validate CLSS capabilities in sending and receiving lifeline impact assessments between the states — and any other agencies in affected areas that use the CLSS tool — during a real disaster. Participants worked through modules that challenged them to respond to disaster impacts and return lifelines to green using the data from the CLSS tool.
The event was a great success. Results validated CLSS's effectiveness in enhancing situational awareness and improving response coordination. Participants were able to leverage resources from less affected areas and get them quickly to areas in dire need, helping turn the status of numerous community lifelines from red to green. While the event was simulated, the real-life successes of CLSS translate into more lives saved and more crises averted or reduced.
Events such as the CLSS Multi-State Exercise help put new S&T innovations to the test and enable us to provide tried and true technologies that support emergency managers. The next step is making CLSS available at no cost to all federal, state, local, and tribal agencies so that they can use the tool to better manage their emergency responses — protecting and saving lives across the homeland.