Towards a Business Continuity Information Network for Rapid Disaster Recovery

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Towards a Business Continuity Information Network
for Rapid Disaster Recovery

• Khalid Saleem, Steven Luis, Yi Deng, Shu-Ching
  Chen, Vagelis Hristidis, Tao Li
• School of Computing and Information
  SciencesFlorida International University
• Miami, FL, USA

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Roadmap

• Motivation
• BCIN System Overview
• Collaborators Acknowledgements
• Related Work
• Conclusions Future Work

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Motivation

• Businesses can incur heavy Financial losses due
  to
• Natural Calamities Hurricanes,
  Earthquakes,Tornadoes
• Terrorist Attacks
• Absence of effective Crisis Management and
  Disaster Recovery tools/resources hinders
• Rapid Disaster Recovery
• Business Continuity
• Small and Medium size business are affected the
  most
• Such businesses make a significant contribution
  to local and state economy

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Motivation (contd) - Facts

• 80 of small and medium businesses that do not
  recover from disaster within a month likely to go
  out of business Bernstein 98
• Businesses that do not recover within 10 days of
  the disaster are not likely to survive Fairbanks
  et al.
• Most of small and medium businesses lack
  effective business continuity plans which can
  lead to a total failure within 3 years of a
  disaster for 75 of such businesses. Blythe
  02
• Delayed Recovery can also affect large businesses
• Delayed recovery and shutdowns cause revenue loss
  at the local, state and federal levels

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Motivation (contd) - Need

• Need for a comprehensive, business-oriented
  disaster preparedness and recovery information
  network that
• Facilitates collaboration among emergency
  management officials and private businesses
• Ensures availability of and access to time
  critical information
• Limitation of current Disaster Preparedness/Recove
  ry methodologies
• Only collaboration among local, state and federal
  agencies
• No private businesses in the process
• Delayed or limited access to time-critical
  information
• Rely mostly on relatively older technologies
  Telephones, two-way radios, tele-text, emails
  etc.

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Roadmap

• Motivation
• BCIN System Overview
• Collaborators Acknowledgements
• Related Work
• Conclusions Future Work

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BCIN Business Continuity Information Network

• Model for effective collaboration among private
  business entities and government agencies for
  business continuity and rapid disaster recovery
• Improves upon ideas presented by Palen and Liu,
  2007 Easily accessible, web based technological
  information pathways for information sharing
• Designed in collaboration with business community
  and emergency operations centers in South Florida

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Goals of BCIN Model

• Create user-friendly, internet-based, information
  service
• Provide businesses with timely disaster recovery
  information
• Facilitate collaboration and information exchange
  with other businesses and government agencies
• Enable intelligent decision support
• Leverage latest advances in data integration,
  data mining, Web and GIS software technologies
• Enable rapid recovery and reduce closure time

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BCIN Model
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Key Information Assisting business continuity and
disaster recovery

• Critical Communications among
• Affected Business Community
• Outside Business Community
• Local Emergency Operations Center
• Non-Governmental Organizations and Media
• Outside Government Agencies
• Local Damage Assessment Damage assessment
  conducted by businesses and emergency management
  officials
• Recovery Plan Execution Identification and
  Execution of recovery plans

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BCIN System Specifics

• Technologies
• Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and Java
  Enterprise Edition (J2EE) for highly interactive
  web based interface
• Google Maps API for embedding Geo-spatial data
• PostGreSQL database systems
• Focus on Hurricane Disaster Preparedness and
  Recovery across the South Florida Region
• Key Components
• Disaster Management Dataspace
• Disaster Recovery Resources Identification
• Situation Awareness
• Dynamic Contact Management
• Intelligent Decision Support

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1. Disaster Management Dataspace

• Acquire, ingest and organize data available in
  various formats from different sources
• Pre/Post Strom information via Situation Reports
  and Incident Action Plans from Emergency
  Operations Center (doc, pdf)
• Open/close status of emergency services,
  infrastructure (airports, seaports, bridges,
  roadways), power, public transportation, schools
  and hospitals (doc, xls)
• Businesses and Non-Governmental Organizations
  Reports (xls, doc, pdf)
• Bank and ATM branch opening/closing
• Food and Grocery Store opening/closing
• Gas stations opening/closings
• Challenges for dynamic data acquisition,
  information extraction and organization

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1. Disaster Management Dataspace
Data Acquisition, Ingest and Organization
Architecture
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2. Disaster Recovery Resources Identification

• Identifies disaster preparation and recovery
  resources around users local area
• Utilizes users profile information
• Employs algorithms for identifying Most Requested
  and Recently Posted Items
• Utilizes Google Maps API

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2. Disaster Recovery Resources Identification
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3. Situation Awareness

• Update Business Managers and Emergency Management
  Officials with information
• Overall Location specific Crisis/Disaster
  conditions
• Customizable pre/post disaster dashboards
• Current setup provides pre/post hurricane related
  information
• Dynamic data update and notification to users

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3. Situation Awareness
Red X indicates closure. Check marks indicate
open. Time indicates the expected closure of the
infrastructure/service
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3. Situation Awareness
Red circles indicate Massive Damage
Blue circles indicate Flooding
BCIN Post-Disaster Situation Awareness. Red X
indicates closure. Check marks indicate open.
Percentages indicate the overall availability or
open/closure status of services/resources/infrastr
ucture
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3. Situation Awareness
BCIN Post-Disaster Situation Awareness with
Business recovery dashboard. Gas station icons
indicate gas stations within a 3 mile radius of
user defined assets. Information about gas
stations can be viewed through the information
window
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3. Situation Awareness
BCIN Post-Disaster Situation Awareness for Banks
open/close status in Miami-Dade county. Red
ellipses indicate closed while Green ellipses
indicate open.
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4. Dynamic Contact Management
Dynamic Contact Management Interface. Blue
Ellipse shows current location of a user. Profile
updates, latesreports and sent/received messages
are appended under each contact name
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5. Intelligent Decision Support (In Preparation)

• Assists business managers and emergency
  management officials in devising and executing
  preparation and recovery decisions
• Utilizes overall conditions and information
  available from previous profiled data for their
  specified items/locations of interest
• Can utilize Historic Storm Data for effective
  preparation against impending threats (Hurricane
  track and intensity, Damage information)

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Infrastructure Considerations - Supporting BCIN
Post-Hurricane

• Failover remote backup site in St. Louis,
  Missouri
• Office Depot stores
• Powered by Generators (if power unavailable)
• Free cell-phone/battery charging for everyone
• Free Internet Access via Wireless Access Points
  within the stores
• Verizon and ATT Wireless Broadband Connections
• State Funded Mobile Wireless Access Distribution
  Vehicles (under preparation)

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Roadmap

• Motivation
• BCIN System Overview
• Collaborators Acknowledgements
• Related Work
• Conclusions Future Work

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Collaborators Acknowledgements

• Beckman Coulter
• Florida First (Floridas Financial Institutions)
• Florida Power Light
• Florida Research Consortium
• Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and its
  Technical Committee
• Greyhound Lines, Inc.
• IBM
• Juan Caraballo
• Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management and
  Homeland Security (ESF-18 Committee)
• Frank Reddish
• Office Depot
• Tom Serio
• Palm Beach County Division of Emergency
  Management
• Butch Truesdale
• Ryder System, Inc.
• South Florida Technology Alliance
• Wal-Mart
• The Quantum Group
• VITAS

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Roadmap

• Motivation
• BCIN System Overview
• Collaborators Acknowledgements
• Related Work
• Conclusions Future Work

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Related Work (1)

• Siegrist, D. 2000. Advanced information
  technology to counter biological terrorism,
  SIGBIO Newsletter. 20, 2 (Aug. 2000), 2-7.
• Used by US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
• Utilizes sensor sites across different locations
  in USA for capturing potential bio-terror threats
• Uses Information tools such as message boards and
  emails
• Information sharing among government agencies
  only
• Mostly effective under pre-disaster conditions

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Related Work (2)

• Schooley, B., Marich, M., and Horan, T. 2007.
  Devising an architecture for time-critical
  information services inter-organizational
  performance data components for emergency medical
  service (EMS), International Conference on
  Digital Government Research 2007
• Provides a time critical information services
  framework in San Mateo county, CA
• Involves collaboration among public/private
  entities
• Utilizes multiple modes of communication and
  information exchange
• Ineffective for effective information exchange
  under disaster conditions
• Palen, L. and Liu, S. B. 2007. Citizen
  communications in crisis anticipating a future
  of ICT-supported public participation. SIGCHI
  Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  2007).
• Indicates persistent citizen communications under
  pre/post disaster conditions assists in
  information sharing
• Communication methodologies include web based
  wikis, web logs and SMS text messaging

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Related Work (3)

• Agrawal, P., Rauschert, I., et.al. 2004.
  Multimodal interface platform for geographical
  information systems (GeoMIP) in crisis
  management, Conference on Multimodal interfaces
  2004
• Utilizes GIS data and maps
• Assists emergency management officials in taking
  necessary precautionary measures and disaster
  recovery actions
• Lacks collaboration tools/techniques for
  effective information sharing and collaboration
  among businesses and emergency officials
• SAHANA, http//www.sahana.lk
• System for collaboration among emergency relief
  camps across South Asia
• Supports GIS Maps and tracking information
  associated with missing persons
• Lacks the model for effective collaboration among
  private businesses and government agencies

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Roadmap

• Motivation
• BCIN System Overview
• Collaborators Acknowledgements
• Related Work
• Conclusions Future Work

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Conclusions, Future Work and Project Timeline

• BCIN Facilitates communication and information
  sharing among businesses and emergency management
  community under disaster/crisis situations
• Future Multimedia data, Intelligent Information
  Delivery, Decision Support
• Project Timeline
• 01/01/2009 Deliver Version 1
• Guarantee performance, reliability and security
  for 1000 companies
• 01/01/2010 Deliver Version 2
• Utilize Cloud Computing
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Support 10,000 companies
• Current fund generating activities in
  collaboration with our partners aim at supporting
  BCIN through 2009

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Thank You - Questions