An information lifeline to the disaster area: the Emergency Response Link

During emergencies, national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) personnel require access to diverse information nationwide to support their respective disaster response and recovery operations. Today, many of these users have inadequate access to these resources. Information such as map overlays, asset locations, and demographics are often difficult to find and access quickly. The National Communications System (NCS) has undertaken an effort to improve disaster area communication capabilities by identifying the full range of communication requirements within the disaster area and implementing smart and effective solutions to improve those communications. As part of this effort, the NCS is developing the Emergency Response Link (ERLink) capability. ERLink is a user-friendly, automated interface for NS/EP users in the field to allow emergency users to quickly access, view, query, and download both government, private, and public information. ERLink provides data over the Internet and other client/server internetworked systems, it provides for the security and integrity of data. Since data is disbursed and physically resides at agency locations, the agency information managers maintain control, management, and authority of their own resources.