Calling All People
At the behest of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Cook County, Ill., has undertaken a collaborative project with its 128 municipalities. The project aims to establish efficient ways for county and municipal first responders to coordinate their activities in the event of an emergency.
“DHS says that we must be able to respond to a catastrophe the size of the footprint of the Twin Towers,” says Dudley Donelson, deputy director, wide area networks with Cook County. “This means that all municipal and county first responders, fire departments, the public works department, and the county sheriff’s department must be able to communicate with one another. We’re building a communications system to do this.”
By and large, first responders understand how to work with each other. Given the communications technology that lets them know that some form of emergency has occurred, police, fire and emergency responders from various communities will fall into the organizational structures set up for handling emergencies.
But what about the general public? People at school, at work or at play won’t necessarily know what to do should a terrorist attack occur.
To address this problem, Cook County’s new infrastructure includes an innovative system designed to bring the public into the communications loop. “Our aim is to harden sites to create a sustained deterrent against terrorist activity,” Donelson says. “We’re putting out cameras, police lights and strobes to let people know that these areas are under observation. But another way to harden sites is to use the eyes and ears of the public.”
Called the Alert Stack, the new public communications system employs a 2.5-foot tall stack of five colored lights keyed to the color-coded Threat Level Advisory System used by DHS.
By March of next year, Cook County will install 135 of these units on the outside walls of police stations in every Cook County municipality and on several Cook County buildings. The Alert Stack light towers mount on specially constructed Plexiglas boards. Signs on the Plexiglas explain the threat advisory system as follows:
- Red: Severe Risk
- Orange: High Risk
- Yellow: Significant Risk
- Blue: General Risk
- Green: Low Risk
On the units, these definitions appear beside the appropriate lights. “The idea is to make sure the public knows the status of an alert,” Donelson says. “We have to keep alerts in the public’s consciousness.”
To further ensure public understanding of the system, Cook County distributes a Red Cross publication that describes in detail the steps people should take at each DHS color-coded threat level.
If Alert Stack proves effective, thousands more units will eventually appear in public schools and public buildings throughout Cook County.
Federal Signal Corp., Oak Brook, Ill., initially developed the alert stack light unit. Public Safety Communications Inc. (PSC), a technology integrator based in South Holland, Ill., modified the Federal Signal concept by adding TCP/IP communications capabilities. “We made it an end device of a network, meaning that it has an IP address and a communications module attached to it,” says Clarence Brownlow, president of PSC. “With this capability, the lights are connected to a network and controlled from a central station. Within 30 seconds, you can change the alert status across the entire county. Cook County can do it; the state can do it; the federal government can do it.”
A unique feature of the Alert Stack is its patented ability to check and report on its own status continually. The units can even send in a request for maintenance when a bulb has burned out. PSC will use this diagnostic capability to monitor and maintain the health of Cook County’s Alert Stack network from a network operations center.
The Alert Stack units including the networking devices and the communications module cost just under $3,500. As of mid-November, Cook County had completed the installation of four units. The first wave of 135 units is expected to come online by March of 2005.
