Emergency management operations control system

After hurricane Katrina, over 500 helicopter crews worked tireless to rescue victims trapped by the storm and the massive flooding which occurred after breaches in several earthen dams protecting New Orleans from surrounding waters. These crews worked without the benefit of air traffic control (ATC) de-confliction, needed communications, command & control and no protocol for mission planning and priorities. To address these problems, the NGATS Institute on behalf of the JPDO developed and advertised a study to solve these problems in the future using technologies from the Next Generation Airspace CONOPS. In December 2007, a team lead by Harris Corporation of Melbourne, Florida was awarded this three task study. This paper summarizes the design and planned operational capabilities of EMOCS. The purpose of this study task was to plan for the development and implementation of a fully operational low altitude airspace emergency management communications, navigation, surveillance, and weather system, applicable to both the civil and government first responders, which can support both fixed and rotary wing operations. Such a system must be comprehensive and provide for a deployable and viable platform capable of applying NextGen enabling programs, such as, but not limited to, automatic dependent surveillance - broadcast (ADS-B), DATACOMM and Network Enabled Operations (NEO). The system needs to be easily transportable, self contained, and set up quickly in austere conditions. The study task provides for planning the implementation requirements of foundational NextGen capabilities. These foundational capabilities are the prerequisite for the eventual transformation of the National Airspace System (NAS) by 2025. They also allow NAS users to derive near-term benefits from the NextGen program. This effort is used to provide guidance and address pre-implementation issues for the refinement of a detailed NextGen Concept of Operations (CONOPS).