Dial G-R-T during disaster: NASA-style center aids decision-making
To the rescue: Global Relief Technologies CEO Michael Gray is seen in his company’s ‘command center’ in Portsmouth, N.H. The company collects and coordinates information on disaster relief efforts. (Staff photo by David Goldman)
By Jay Fitzgerald
Published by The Boston Herald
Monday, May 28, 2007
According to Michael Gray, over-worked disaster-relief workers face a major problem when trying to help refugees: lack of communication.
“We’re talking about basic, basic, basic lack of communications,” said Gray, chief executive of Portsmouth, N.H.-based Global Relief Technologies.
As a U.S. Naval officer and as refugee coordination officer attached to the U.S. Department of State, Gray used to see firsthand how chaotic situations, such as those in Kosovo and elsewhere, can hamper the best-intentioned efforts to collect data and send help and supplies to the right places.
So four years ago, Gray, as a newly minted civilian, founded Global Relief Technologies, - determined to make the job technologically easier for field workers to gather and relay key information back to a central headquarters.
GRT relies on a number of non-proprietary hardware products to get things done - from satellite receivers to hand-held personal digital assistants, or PDAs, made by other companies.
But Gray said the difference is that GRT creates a special software that allows field workers to punch in data that’s transmitted to the company’s headquarters in Portsmouth, where it has a central command center that Gray likens to NASA’s mission-control room. There, banks of computers and wall-map screens track data as it streams in on a constant basis from field workers hundreds or thousands of miles away.
A field worker might be counting refugees crossing a bridge in a devastated area. Another might estimate how much drinking water or how many tents are needed in a certain place. Others might make emergency orders for medical supplies.
The information is punched into PDAs, or even cell phones, and transmitted back to Portsmouth, where GRT teams collect the data, analyze it and allow customers, whether they are the U.S. Marines or the Red Cross, to securely access the information for quick decisions. No more paper reports sitting in stacks.
No more garbled messages. No frantic phone calls broken up in mid conversation.
Currently, GRT is working with the U.S. Navy Medical Corps to track avian flu outbreaks in Asia - and a GRT team just recently returned from Thailand after implementing and using GRT’s technology.
The “Rapid Data Management System” software can be custom-designed for any situation, whether it’s tracking avian flu cases in Asia or supplies being transported to Iraq, via a contract with Waltham-based Raytheon.
The key is to make the software easy to use for field workers (think UPS drivers punching in data on a PDA after making deliveries) and yet complex enough to make sense of large amounts of data coming into a central-command headquarters, Gray said.
Another critical aspect of GRT’s system is “quantifying” information - or field workers answering very specific “yes or no questions” deemed critical for a disaster relief operation, such as reporting on casualties or whether blankets are needed in a devastated region, Gray said.
“I can’t count how many times people have said to me, ‘Isn’t someone already doing this?’ ” said Gray of GRT’s system.
Unfortunately, many disaster-relief agencies may have sophisticated technologies to relay information, but they don’t have a coordinated system to receive, sort and analyze reams of data, Gray said.
“It’s chaotic out there,” Gray said of disaster situations caused by wars or Mother Nature.
Global Relief Technologies was started with funds from family and friends. Telenor, a telecommunications company in Norway, is now an investor in GRT, Gray said.
Gray said his company - with about $5 million in revenue and more than 20 employees - is expanding and hiring in an effort to keep up with demand from governments, charitable organizations and relief agencies.