For any first responder, stress and anxiety come with the job. In a sense, homeland security may represent America’s anxiety writ large. Smith remembers what he thought homeland security would focus on as America recovered from the 9/11 attacks: “At first, homeland security’s definition was to secure ‘here’ (America, the homeland), translate information, get it out to the public.” Today, Smith thinks most folks in his community in rural Southeast feel like it should focus on a single, critical mission: “Keeping the bad guys out.”

But, for DHS, ‘not knowing’ what the future held in store for America inevitably meant that the agency’s focus was destined to be unclear. As an assistant fire chief, Smith’s focus was on his city. “You’re in a bubble, worried about your municipality,” he says. Firefighters spend a lot of time in the buildings they protect, learning about their community and its hazards. Most of the players are known: local officials, major industries, and extensive pre-planning for emergency responses.

Now, as an emergency manager, Smith says he must keep up with a more complicated set of issues and events than what he dealt with in the fire service. “Here, it’s a lot more about what’s going on across the country. It’s influential across a broad spectrum, not only first responders, but the community as well.” The key difference for emergency management, he says, is the audience. “There’s not a limit to just one geographical area. It’s the county as a whole, from politicians to everyday people.”

Emergency management offers different challenges, he says. “There’s more of a variety. It’s not always an ‘emergency.’” But, despite the broader focus, Smith emphasizes the critical role the emergency manager plays in maintaining that “broader focus” and making his community more resilient to disaster impacts. “If we don’t do what we do, who’s going to do it? It can be slow and boring. It’s a lot of planning. But you have to have those plans so you can execute when you’re in need.” There are always unknowns, he says. Maintaining situational awareness means not just understanding the local community and its hazards, but also keeping up with the latest information from DHS and current events on the news. Nonetheless, he says the requirement to rush into danger and save lives is always the order of business: “You can’t stop responding just because there’s a threat out there.”

“Blanket information sharing”

A broad focus, and too many issues to keep up with, has also been a concern for DHS. In the months after 9/11, and still today, we find many words in the media devoted to discussion of how federal agencies like CIA and the FBI and their counterparts face continual challenges communicating among themselves and sharing information adequately. The magnitude of what DHS has become is hard to comprehend. “Originally, I thought about DHS as a big border patrol agency, with a grand scheme to protect borders — not just the southern border but all points of entry,” Smith says. Now, for Smith and many who work in the homeland security enterprise, DHS is “a large government agency that has taken on its own life, and maybe lost a little of its initial tasking, that has its fingers in so many pies that it would be really hard to define what the entire goal may be.”

Being tasked with a mission of sharing information and getting the message out to both first responders and to the public means DHS regularly issues all kinds of reports, guidance, and documents covering topics ranging from the Coast Guard, to border security, to bioterrorism, to tsunami preparedness. Homeland security is everywhere. “Like anything where you put so much out there, you get desensitized to it. Now it’s on everything. Before, when it was new, it would catch your eye.” For Smith, this means crucial information can sometimes be lost in a fog of overwhelming amounts of information. “Sometimes, its hard to discern what’s really important from what may just be blanket information sharing.”

How should we sort through the fog and ensure critical homeland security information stays relevant — and ensure the people who need the information are actually receiving it? We are constantly bombarded with information. Emails and updates from state and federal officials. The 24-hour news cycle. Social media. Smith draws on his years of experience exercising situational awareness to help deal with the stress of information overload and the high stakes of homeland security and public safety operations, a skill he hopes others will continue to exercise. “The only thing you can do is better educate the responders,” he says, “to make them aware that they need to take an overall snapshot of what’s going on.”

A 2007 paper authored by Harrald and Jefferson of The George Washington University entitled “Shared Situational Awareness in Emergency Management Mitigation and Response” examines some of the historical influences on how situational awareness is understood in the homeland security enterprise. The authors point out that a heritage of top-down, military-style “command and control” models of information sharing underpin how emergency management and homeland security activities are organized today at the local, state, and federal level in the US. They go on to point out that true situational awareness will inevitably be unique for each participant in a large-scale emergency or disaster.

Significant among the authors’ observations is that transmitting “semantic meaning” — the unique meaning a piece of information holds for a specific person—is difficult, if not impossible, in a disaster. Pushing raw information ‘up-the-chain’ or using an information-sharing technology platform is not the same thing as sharing knowledge. In a nutshell, it’s common sense: the same information will have different meanings for different people. One person may see a flooded house and call it ‘destroyed,’ while another may say it is merely ‘heavily damaged.’

For first responders — and especially those who are supervisors — the Harrald and Jefferson paper is an interesting read, and it would make for a great 15-minute training in the firehouse or at roll-call in the police station. The paper identifies five key problems that hinder our ability to share situational awareness in a disaster. These problems, when rephrased as questions, make a great checklist for responders to keep in the backs of their minds when taking in information when in the office, in the field, and in the EOC or command post. These key points are paraphrased and summarized below:

What does it mean to them, and what does it mean to me? “Them” includes both (a) whomever is sending you the information, and (b) whomever is going to eventually receive the information from you. Keep in mind the ‘information’ in question could be as simple as surveying cars in a parking lot. Paying attention to spot something that is out-of-place or that may (or may not) have special meaning is the key. The same information will mean different things to different people. If you hear someone say “the building has major damage,” does that mean the structure is completely demolished and no longer recognizable, or that the power is off and there are a few roof leaks? How good is the information? Quality control. Do you have all the information, or only bits-and-pieces? How old is the information? Is this information corroborating what you already know, or is it taking you in a different direction entirely? Does it matter to me? This is a tricky one. Scanning the environment means you are constantly taking in new information, at least some of which will be irrelevant. But, you may need to refer back to that irrelevant information in the future if your responsibilities change or if the incident circumstances change. Additionally, it’s critical to know what is important to the people you will be working with and communicating with. Think of this in terms of the old office parable: “You need to know how to do the jobs of the people two levels beneath you and one level above you.” Strive to know not only what is relevant to you, but also what is relevant to the key partners with whom you are working. What is the perception of the information? This is where context and bias come into play. If you hear someone excited on the radio screaming about a major fire, ask yourself: does this person usually get excited, or is the behavior out-of-character? Has anything happened recently to make this person change the way she normally perceives things? Are there cultural or educational issues at play? Think about the difference between a radiological IED (a dirty bomb) and a nuclear weapon. In a disaster, how might people perceive the word “radiological” differently depending on their training and education? Is everyone on the same page? Sometimes, it is helpful to do a group ‘reality check.’ This may mean taking a step back and checking to see that everyone’s actions match up with how you think things should be going — and, if not, asking yourself where the disconnect is. It may also mean holding a briefing in an EOC to ensure everyone has a chance to offer information and ask questions, or taking time out on a conference call to offer perspectives from each level of a response on how an incident is progressing — and where it should be headed.

“Ever changing and always challenging.”

Sam Smith’s bottom line is simple: “Keep educating yourself on situational awareness.” The environment is “ever changing and always challenging,” he says. “It’s important to make sure we are aware of what’s going on around us.”

For homeland security professionals, whether you’re sorting through tons of email, driving a fire truck, driving a desk, or just driving the kids to a game, those are words to live by.

This article is Part One of a series on Situational Awareness and Decision Making in the homeland security enterprise. Stay tuned for Part Two.

References and Links:

Teodorescu, H.-N. “SN Voice and Text Analysis as a Tool for Disaster Effects Estimation #x2014; A Preliminary Exploration.” In 2013 7th Conference on Speech Technology and Human — Computer Dialogue (SpeD), 1–8, 2013. doi:10.1109/SpeD.2013.6682650. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6682650

Harrald, John. “Shared Situational Awareness in Emergency Management Mitigation and Response.” In Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Big Island, Forthcoming. Society Press, 2007. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.123.1409

Bragg, Rick. “2 Bomb Blasts Rock Abortion Clinic at Atlanta; 6 Are Injured.” The New York Times, January 17, 1997, sec. U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/17/us/2-bomb-blasts-rock-abortion-clinic-at-atlanta-6-are-injured.html.

Chandler, Adam. “A Terror Attack in Texas.” The Atlantic, May 4, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/05/a-terror-attack-in-texas/392288/