The Mumbai terrorists used an array of commercial technologies -- from Blackberries to GPS navigators to anonymous e-mail accounts -- to pull off their heinous attacks.

After a few months of workshops and design interations, it is finally time for the field-based use of the LiveResponse prototype with the Roadsmart application.

Google has launched Google Flu Trends, a web page where you can find up-to-date influenza-related activity estimates for each of the 50 states in the United States. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated user search queries for “flu”-related searches to estimate flu activity in the United States.

HANYS’ statewide Emergency Preparedness Advisory Committee on Friday discussed a wide range of issues related to hospital preparedness for natural disasters or nuclear, biological, chemical, or terrorist attacks. The Committee heard presentations from state officials on the state’s emergency data system and federal funding for the coming year, and discussed how to integrate emergency preparedness into day-to-day operations.

Technology that helps many drivers reach their destinations may soon help Tippecanoe County ambulances respond to emergencies faster.

In fact, just hours after the earthquake damage was judged to be minimal, the Department sent a link to its citizen preparedness guide to its entire email/text message list

What's more impressive is that the "Breaking News" segment was about twenty minutes late. As has been noted in previous earthquakes, Twitter got the news right away.

Analytical Tools Enhance Patient Care Reporting Solution

The system is free and without registration or subscription barriers. It started in prototype in 2006 and now gets about 20,000 unique visits a month, mainly from the public health community (for comparison, this blog gets 30,000 to 40,000 visits a month). The system, called HealthMap, is pretty impressive.

In Williamstown, North Adams and Adams, ambulance services are turning onto the information superhighway to better communicate with hospitals.

American Red Cross' Disaster Response Center to learn more about the growing role of new media in the Red Cross’s response efforts during the Midwestern floods and tornadoes.

3n (National Notification Network), the leading global mass notification system provider, today announced the launch of two new data centers in Canada.

Awarepoint Corporation and Skytron today announced Skytron Asset Manager, the healthcare industry's only integrated active RFID asset management and information resource solution to improve hospital patient care, enhance staff productivity and better manage equipment capital and rental expense.

Tracking the location and availability of resources such as hospitals, transportation equipment and water during an emergency situation can be life-saving.

Check out the work by Leysia Palen at University of Colorado, Boulder in the US. She focus her research on crisis informatics

AT&T said the Texas Special Needs Evacuation Tracking System (SNETS) solution uses RFID, wireless and mobile data technologies to provide real-time information on evacuees and is the US's first statewide citizen-evacuation system.

Microsoft launched HealthVault, a free web-based service that allows users to store their medical records online and eventually share them with doctors and health care professionals. On October 17, an executive at Google noted that the search giant was also interested in the area of health information services. And on November 19, 23andMe, a startup focused on web-based personal genetic analysis, announced a program that will allow consumers to pay $999 for the privilege of exploring their own genomes. These latest developments — and dozens of similar initiatives — could push the online sharing of personal health information into the mainstream.

Avineon, Inc., a successful provider of IT, engineering, geospatial and program management services, today announced the release of Avineonics(TM), a state-of-the-art information system that enables organizations to automate the preparation, organization, management, execution and documentation of emergency preparedness and incident management functions.

Patient throughput and its underlying components (patient assignment, bed managment, housekeeping, and patient transportation) have an enormous impact on hospitals that I’ve seen first-hand: ED waits, patient satisfaction, staff satisfaction, and even clinical outcomes.

One of the key drivers behind Nortel's Unified Communications strategy is the realization that success in the applications business of the future will not be based on who can build the best single application, but rather who can present the most comprehensive and useful experience to the user.

Ryder System, Inc. (NYSE: R), a global leader in transportation and supply chain management solutions, has selected the Send Word Now(TM) Alert service for its 28,000 global employees.

State building regulators will decide today whether to use a new high-tech tool to assess the seismic safety of hospitals, a proposal that would delay or erase billions of dollars in retrofits and reconstruction.

Emergency Disaster Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of U.S. BioDefense, Inc. , announces that it will be exhibiting and attending the International Association of Emergency Managers 2007 Annual Conference in conjunction with the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Expo (http://www.iaem.com) in Reno, Nevada on November 11th through the 14th.

ESi(R), the global leader in crisis information management technology, announced today that Cynthia Foreman will join the company as regional manager in Florida.

Emergency preparedness software gives first responders a better view of the rescue scene with new mapping technologies

The first Emergency Mobile Trauma Unit and several support vehicles have been delivered to Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) and are ready for field testing and deployment.

Now that we have a bit of actual experience with CAP… and now that CAP has been adopted as a core technology for broadcast and cellular alerting in the U.S… it’s may be time to start talking about what we’ve learned that might make the next version of the CAP standard even better.

Patients admitted to the emergency department of Hawke's Bay hospital in Hastings will be tagged with RFID chips so their movements can be automatically monitored by wireless scanners.

The city does not yet have an emergency mass-notification system similar to the one officials credit with saving lives from the wildfires raging across Southern California.

Spokane County plans to join several area organizations that use the sort of electronic notification equipment that has been warning thousands of Southern California residents to flee from advancing wildfires.

The EDXL Distribution Element (DE) specification describes a standard message distribution framework for data sharing among emergency information systems using the XML-based Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL).

VoiceNation announces its partnership with the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to create a bullet proof hotline service that FEMA team members can call in to receive updates about disasters.

he Health Information and Management Systems Society and the COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance are teaming up to extend electronic medical record technology to emergency response.

When the first patients walk through the doors of the new Brampton Civic Hospital in a couple of weeks, they will be entering a centre like no other in Canada - but one that will increasingly become the standard for health-care delivery across the country.

Send Word Now, the leading provider of on-demand alerting and response services, today announced that it raised $8.5 million in Series C financing.

WeatherBug has outfitted San Antonio's emergency operations center with its system to track live weather conditions.

There is a proposal to establish an emergency services network in the State which will link all the major government and private hospitals and ambulance service providers to give immediate care during all medical emergencies, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, R. Ashok said here on Monday.

Researchers suggest that a Web-based service, which could be up and running in three to five years, could improve reporting on disasters, the coordination of a response, the dissemination of information and promote resident-to-resident assistance.

Living in Wisconsin, we’re not strangers to the severe weather that often rolls through in the spring, summer and fall seasons.

Emergency responders to have online info source

Virginia Tech continues to be a driving force in people’s thinking about communication and particularly mass notification.

Aurora's Office of Emergency Management is compiling a database of residents with special needs so emergency planners can assist them more effectively during a large scale disaster. Residents can voluntarily submit information to the city, and the information will eventually be placed into a mapping system so planners can pinpoint locations where residents need extra help. Special needs include use of a wheelchair or ventilator, being deaf or hearing impaired, or could include any special circumstances that require additional assistance.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new project with the City of Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) to implement one of the most advanced city-wide intelligent security system ever conceived. The engagement is a part of Chicago's Operation Virtual Shield, a project that encompasses one of the world's largest video security deployments.

Two global technology innovators have collaborated to put the power of geographic information system (GIS) technology into the hands of decision makers. ESi, the leader in crisis information management technology, and ESRI, the leader in GIS, today announced the release of WebEOC Mapper Professional (WebEOC Mapper).

Last week, they had an item on a new program out of CDC, named Public Health Information Rapid Exchange (PHIRE). From what I can gather, it’s a system for sending health alerts out to registered users. I signed up recently - and haven’t received anything yet, so sorry that I can’t tell if you if it’s the greatest thing since Facebook or not.

Colorado State University this week launched its emergency cell phone text messaging alert service. The service is available to all faculty, staff and students who sign up.

Let's say that a major bridge in your city has collapsed at the height of rush hour, claiming an unknown number of victims. You'd like to communicate with your staff, both to ascertain their well-being and to tell them what to do tomorrow.

Nassau County can now send telephone warnings to all its residents -- or just a targeted area of the county -- about storms or other emergencies, County Executive Thomas Suozzi said Thursday.

In an effort to assist communities and organizations affected by natural disasters or major communications disruptions, Catalyst Telecom has become an authorized distributor of the Avaya Inc.'s Mobile Communication System (MCS).

Schedule reminders on previously mentioned SMS reminder service PingMe with a phone call to the voice-to-text service, Jott.

County Emergency Management Director Tim Hardy is hoping a new data collection system will help keep track of people completing necessary national incident management training.

... reports on an interesting draft specification from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for using the Session Initiation Protocol to deliver Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) alerts.

ChoicePoint (NYSE: CPS), through its iMapData service, was a key participant in Operation Rapid Response, an internal preparedness exercise hosted recently by Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare in Louisville to test its ability to respond to a community-wide crisis using day-to-day facility management capabilities.

...commenting in the last couple of days on a news item, originally from PCWorld, titled LA Fire Department all 'aTwitter' over Web 2.0, where throughout the article itself you would be able to read further how the L.A. Fire Department is starting to make use of social software tools like Twitter in order to be able to handle whatever emergencies and crises in a much more efficient and effective way by spreading information around much faster than through traditional tools.

From In Case of Emergency - "My experiment with Twitter isn't going well. While I still haven't realized the potential benefits, I feel that's partly my fault. I'm simply too busy to interact with the community in order to see these potential benefits - and frankly, I'm just too old to update my friends on what I've been up to minute to minute."

Three papers developed by staff of ESi(R), the global leader in crisis information management technology, will be presented at the 2007 China-U.S. Conference on Disaster Management, being held in Beijing, August 7-9, 2007.

Tornado prompted province to launch advanced warning system

State officials are scrambling to create a $7.5 million spending plan that will get police, fire and emergency medical services on a common wavelength.

Federal Signal Corporation, a leader in advancing security and well-being, announced today that the Omaha, Neb., Tri-County Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) Region, composed of the City of Omaha, Douglas County, Sarpy County and Washington County have begun to deploy the FS Codespear interoperable industry platform to enhance emergency management, planning and response within each respective agency's emergency management operations.

After all of this blather about how social media can save the world, and why won’t emergency management folks, public health folks, preparedness folks and other response groups grab the bull by the horns and use social media - I finally signed up.

The Guardian Tracer was showcased in JEPRS (Joint Emergency Planning and Response System) which is an emergency management tool as a result of the collaboration between Catalyst Capabilities International, Infusion Development and Microsoft.

More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world's richest information source hasn't necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989.

Overlooked and difficult to find, there are hundreds of thousands of U.S. government web sites that can help you accomplish a variety of tasks.

On this week's podcast, Jon spoke with Rod Piukkala, Director, Telus Business Solutions. Within this group his focus is on the Ontario Public Sector, and he joined Jon to speak about the current state of emergency communications in Canada.

Ambitions ran high when Wired joined forces in January with new media incubator NewAssignment.net to try a novel experiment in pro-am journalism.

The company has rolled together two of its user-generated mapping products -- MyMaps and Mapplets -- to give Google Maps users the ability to create custom maps using dynamic data.

VoiceNation announces its partnership with the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to create a bullet proof hotline service that FEMA team members can call in to receive updates about disasters.

Karim Lakhani is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School's Technology and Operations Management Unit. He is a serious scholar of crowdsourcing, trying to build theories of if, how and why it works.

CATAAlliance rewards expertise, innovation and leadership in technology

Experts say U.S. companies need to take the increasing use of cyberwarfare tactics and tools very seriously.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and eSchool News Network have joined forces to develop a comprehensive and interactive disaster readiness online resource for educators.

New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) Commissioner Fred M. Jacobs, M.D., J.D. announced today the formal opening of the Health Command Center (HCC), a $1.8 million facility from which the Department can respond in real time to a full spectrum of health emergencies, including infectious diseases, natural and manmade disasters.

I cannot paste the whole abstract due to LinkedIN restrictions, so I select some parts; I can e-mail if you want

A national emergency alert announced on local television and radio stations throughout Illinois this morning appears to be the result of a human error in Washington, D.C.

At ESRI's Senior Executive Seminar (SES), held the day before the User's Conference convened in San Diego, senior managers gathered to hear their peers discuss the ways in which they moved GIS out of the backroom and into the boardroom.

Recently, I found out about a few software programs that might be of interest to my readers.

Medusa Medical Technologies Inc. (Medusa) announced today that its flagship electronic patient care reporting software, the Siren ePCR(TM) Suite, is currently being implemented in a pilot program for ground ambulances operated by Emergency Health Services Nova Scotia (EHS).

AtHoc has released an extension to the company’s alert notification system to enable federal, state and local emergency management officials to send Emergency Alert System messages to the public more rapidly and efficiently.