Archive for the 'chicago' Category

The Joint Threat Anticipation Center

Good stuff, right here in Chicago (h/t @harper):

The Joint Threat Anticipation Center

The Joint Threat Anticipation Center was a collaborative project of the Center for International Studies and the Center for Complex Adaptive Agent Systems Simulation at Argonne National Laboratory

. It was funded by the Advanced Systems Concepts Office (ASCO) of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) from 2004-08, as part of the agency’s larger Threat Anticipation Program.

The foundational objectives of the center were as follows:

  • Expand and champion the art and science of anticipating threats.
  • Establish a center located at the University of Chicago that will become a recognized ?center for excellence? of threat anticipation expertise, promotion, and products.
  • Develop a repository at Argonne National Laboratory for models, publications, and institutional memory of threat anticipation.
  • Provide the services that can assist ASCO with focused TAP activities and contacts that facilitate federal interagency participation.

As with any extended collaborative research project, these objectives evolved as the relationship between the two partners and funding agency grew and developed over four years. As concerns CIS, the Director and Associate Director identified and developed the relevant social science research and research product of the University of Chicago community, and built links between those researchers, Argonne, and DTRA to help advance the field in computational social science modeling and the anticipation of national security threats.

Read more about JTAC’s activities from 2004-2008…

Chicago Backs Up 911

Fran Spielman has the story:

City quietly builds backup 911 site at O’Hare Airport :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: City Hall
Amid cloak-and-dagger secrecy, the Daley administration is building a backup 911 center at O’Hare Airport to handle emergency calls if a terrorist attack or natural disaster damages Chicago’s primary facility in the West Loop, City Hall sources said Wednesday.

Sources said the backup facility will be located in an O’Hare building that houses the airport’s communications nerve center.

Marathon, Heat, and Emergency Response in Chicago

A stinging, detailed critique showing what the downtown heat emergency related to the LaSalle Bank Marathon has to say about emergency preparedness in Chicago

Second City Cop: Who’s Culpable?
The inefficiency of City agencies to coordinate a large scale response to an emergency situation run by a private entity should really bring pause to anyone who thinks this town is anywhere near ready for an Olympics or a terror attack.

Fixing the Interoperable Communications Problem in Chicago

 Chicago received cash today to help solve the problem identified in recent interoperability reports. Got to get less turf war between county and city.

City to get $16M for police, fire communications upgrades | Crains
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the money will answer “the urgent need for firefighters, police, and other first responders to be able to communicate effectively with one another.”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the money should get the entire country up to a basic standard of effective emergency communication by 2009 — but only if the local authorities coordinate with each other and avoid turf fights.