'Hometown Business' on Map
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| Global Relief Technologies' CEO Michael Gray (left) and General Counsel Paul Kollmer-Dorsey stand in the company's operaions center at 30 New Hampshire Ave., Pease Interantional Tradeport. Shir Haberman photo |
By Shir Haberman
SeacoastOnline
Sunday, September 16, 2007
PORTSMOUTH — A local company is in line for a substantial financial windfall if a provision placed in the Senate version of the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, and supported by both New Hampshire Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu, is ultimately signed into law.
More importantly, however, is that if the $6.9 million appropriation comes through, this region could be the first to have a National Guard unit — in this case, the Maine National Guard — prepared and equipped to respond to disasters using real-time data thanks to systems designed by Pease International Tradeport-based Global Relief Technologies.
"It's not as much about the money as it is about saving lives and alleviating suffering," said GRT's CEO and former Navy intelligence officer Michael Gray.
Gray knows a lot about how the inability to generate and analyze disaster information in real time can affect the effectiveness of humanitarian efforts from his work doing village assessments in Kosovo in the 1990s, and more recently in Afghanistan.
"We were having trouble determining how much plastic sheeting was necessary to protect the population in Kosovo and why we were dropping bombs on humanitarian aid workers in Afghanistan," he said.
Despite the vast amount of technology available, disaster-relief workers, both military and civilian, were still using pencils and paper to prepare the reports assessing local needs. Those completed forms rarely made their way to the people in decision-making positions, and if they did, they took weeks to turn into usable data, Gray indicated.
Quickly realizing that the military bureaucracy was too entrenched and slow moving to accept another approach to disaster data collection and analysis, Gray and a few others decided to come up with their own system, which relies on hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs) hooked up to GPS systems, tied to satellite telephones. These systems are put into the hands of those who are witnessing the disasters firsthand in the field.
"If you empower people with the proper tools, you'll get the necessary data," Gray said, and the success of GRT validates that theory.
However, there was another piece of the puzzle that needed to be addressed: It involved what to do with all this data once it is accumulated and how to get that data into a simple, readable form so those in decision-making positions, as well as those in the field, could act on it.
Gray and his staff began working on the development of what he called "virtual network operations centers," or V-NOCs, to deal with that issue. V-NOCs are secure databases designed to the specifications of each customer that have the ability to be updated on a real-time basis. It means an agency monitoring something like an avian flu outbreak would have information concerning the event available in a comprehensible form that is updated each time a worker in the field pushed the "send" button on his or her PDA.
That reality was tested by no less than the U.S. Navy earlier this year. The Navy Medical Corps used GRT's Rapid Data Management System in an exercise designed to determine the effectiveness of the system in tracking a simulated operation relating to the deadly flu in Thailand dubbed "Cobra Gold 2007."
"In seven days, medics using 20 PDAs triaged 10,000 people," Gray said. "The system was designed to the specifications of four Navy surgeons (who reviewed the data and made recommendations based on them). We configure the results to the needs of the users."
A story that appeared in Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the U.S. military, commented on a similar exercise held in April of this year in Okinawa.
"If the avian flu becomes a real pandemic threat to humans, especially in the Western Pacific, the III Marine Expeditionary Force will be ready," wrote Stars and Stripes reporter David Allen. "During a recent humanitarian relief deployment in the Philippines, MEF corpsmen tested technology a Portsmouth, N.H., firm (GRT) developed for almost instant tracking of vital information that in the past would take days or even weeks to analyze."
The story quoted Navy Capt. David Lane, force surgeon for the III MEF, as saying the GRT technology "worked exceedingly well."
Disasters come in all shapes and sizes, and everywhere in the world, so in addition to working with the military, GRT is planning a pilot program to test its system with the Great Bay Chapter of the American Red Cross.
"Disaster-assessment information needs to be fast and accurate so we can develop a plan to determine our materials, human resource and financial needs," said the chapter's Executive Director Sarah Cherne. "The quicker we can do the assessment, the quicker we can provide for the needs of those involved."
The receptiveness of private and state agencies to do pilot programs to prove the need for an integrated, end-to-end rapid data management system for disaster relief reaffirms Gray's decision to move his business to New Hampshire.
"By being in New Hampshire, I can have more of an impact than if I were still inside the (Washington, D.C.) Beltway," he said. "We are a hometown business and this is where we will always be."