ReadyCommunities Partnership members help determine which community preparedness and response challenges should be addressed through pilot projects, and collaborate on templates for best practices which might be used during the pilots, facilitated by tools such as the Crisis Response Officer, Virtual Surge Depot and the Essential Public Network.
Members also help summarize some of the barriers to preparedness, and make recommendations on how those barriers can be removed as ways to improve essential cooperation between stakeholders for optimal community response capability.
Each community participating in the pilots will work with private and community sector organizations to demonstrate how current best practices, available commercial capabilities and technology can help meet the challenges to community-level readiness. Partners include industry leaders such as Sprint, Siemens, Cisco, Computer Associates, IBM, ESRI, Previstar, TerreStar, Pax Mondial and others who participate and advise each of the communities on how to begin to test and demonstrate at least one best practice per pilot.
Advisory board members have provided thought leadership and participated in a number of forums promoting policy and practical solutions, an example of which can be viewed here to read the testimony before Congress by former DHS Under Secretary George W. Foresman describing the Crisis Response Officer.
Community partners include Charleston/SC, Galveston /TX, Oakland County/MI, Hamilton County/IN, Buffalo /NY, Appalachia region/KY, Miami/FL
The Partnership held a 2010 National Symposium on military base and port community resiliency at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC under the honorary chairmanship of Senator Mary Landrieu which can be viewed here.
A subsequent follow-up symposium was convened in Miami and hosted by PortMiami in May of 2011, a summary of which can be viewed here. Following Miami, subsequent symposia were convened in Charleston, Doral, New Orleans and Long Beach which completed the Military Base/Port Community Initiative. Click here for the 2019 Charleston Community Resiliency Initiative Roundtable Summary. |