Office of the Secretary 

Office of State and Local Government 

Coordination & Preparedness 

Washington, DC 20531 

ODP Information Bulletin 

No. 182 July 19, 2005 

TO: All State Administrative Agency Heads 

 All State Administrative Agency Points of Contact 

 All State Homeland Security Directors 

 

FROM: Matt A. Mayer 

 Acting Executive Director 

 

SUBJECT: Providing Homeland Security Knowledge Resources to Emergency Responders 

 

As part of the Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP) efforts to provide needed homeland security 

knowledge resources to emergency responders, ODP has initiated a number of programs. These 

include System Assessment and Validation for Emergency Responders (SAVER); Lessons Learned 

Information System (LLIS); Responder Knowledge Base (RKB); Terrorism Knowledge Base 

(TKB); and the Terrorism Library (TL). 

System Assessment and Validation for Emergency Responders Program 

Emergency responders nationwide know first-hand how important reliable, unbiased performance 

and cost information is to the successful completion of their mission. ODP recognized this 

requirement and established the SAVER program to provide emergency responders with the 

information necessary to obtain the best value when purchasing equipment. 

The SAVER program is designed to assist emergency responders by providing impartial, practitioner 

relevant, operationally oriented assessments and validations on the performance of critical 

equipment. SAVER assessments are made of Commercial Off-Of-The-Shelf (COTS) equipment for 

effectiveness, quality, and safety under conditions closely simulating actual use. The SAVER 

reports can then be used by decision makers and responders to better select, procure, use, and 

maintain their equipment. 

The SAVER website http://saver.tamu.edu is used to provide these assessment reports and other 

equipment related information to emergency responders. As pertinent information becomes 

available, such as assessment results, project initiation, or hot links, the applicable web pages are 

updated to reflect the most recent findings. Access to the SAVER website is granted through the 

Responder Knowledge Base (RKB), and registering at RKB will allow a responder to obtain access 

to SAVER.

The SAVER website, which went live in August 2004, now has over 12,000 registered users. In 

March 2005, SAVER had an average of 107 users per day (3,345/month) visiting the site and those 

users viewed an average of 9.84 pages during their visit. There were over 2,000 hits on SAVER 
reports and over 32,900 page views during March 2005. The SAVER Program Support Office is 

managed by the Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M University. 

Lessons Learned Information System 

The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), Oklahoma City, OK, is a 

non-profit organization funded by ODP. Working in coordination with ODP, MIPT has created a 

national information sharing capability on lessons learned in managing terrorist or critical incidents. 

The Lessons Learned Information System (LLIS) provides a national repository of terrorism 

preparedness and mitigation knowledge. The LLIS database is available through 

http://www.LLIS.gov and offers the following types of original content: 

• Lessons Learned: knowledge and experience, positive or negative, derived from actual incidents as 

well as observations and historical review of operations, training, and exercises. 

• Best practices: peer-validated techniques, procedures, ideas, or solutions that work and are solidly 

grounded upon actual experience in operations, training, and exercises. 

• Good Stories: exemplary, but non-peer-validated, initiatives implemented by various jurisdictions 

that have shown success in their specific environments and that may provide useful information to 

other communities and organizations. 

While initially focused on the traditional emergency responder community, LLIS provides the 

cornerstone of a National Center of Excellence for sharing best practices and lessons learned that 

includes various sub-sectors of homeland security and counterterrorism. 

More than 16,000 have applied for membership to LLIS since the launch in April 2004, and 13,264 

have been approved. The membership roles have increased significantly in the last few months with 

3,862 applications for membership in March 2005 and 3,000 approved for membership. There were 

some 80,163 user visits in the month of March 2005. During a recent one week period, there were 

more than 1,300 logins to LLIS. 

Responder Knowledge Base 

The Responder Knowledge Base (RKB) has been designed to provide emergency responders with a 

single source for integrated information on current equipment, including organizing information 

such as the Inter-Agency Board’s Standardized Equipment List (SEL) and ODP’s Authorized 

Equipment List (AEL). The RKB is available through http://www.rkb.mipt.org/ and answers such 

questions as: 

• What equipment is out there? 

• Has it been certified, and does it meet standards? 

• Are there federal funds available to pay for it? 

The RKB also includes a number of reports and web-links that will provide the emergency responder 

with a variety of useful information on equipment. MIPT also manages the RKB program. RKB 

recently provided application and equipment information for the Commercial Equipment Direct 

Assistance Program (CEDAP). In one day, over 6,000 applications for CEDAP were downloaded. 

The application process for CEDAP equipment was open for 30 days, and over 1,300 applications 

were received for a total of $30 million in equipment. 
To-date, the RKB has about 12,000 registered users. In March 2005, the website experienced an 

average of 700 users per day, with each user spending an average of 12 minutes on the site during 

their visit. The system now has updated information on over 3,500 emergency responder products. 

Terrorism Knowledge Base

The Terrorism Knowledge Base (TKB) aids responders and others in their understanding of terrorist 

groups, attacks, and legal action against them. TKB is available through http://www.tkb.org/ and 

offers access to over 35 years of international terrorism data, five years of worldwide domestic 

terrorism data, 20 years of terrorist indictments, GIS mapping capabilities, and profiles of groups 

and leaders. The TKB includes remarkable analytical capabilities such as statistical summaries, 

trend graphing, and side-by-side group comparisons. 

March 2005 was a record month for the TKB with 52,038 visits and 34,496 unique visitors. Using 

figures from TKB’s launch on September 2, 2004 through April 1, 2005, TKB has received 157,695 

unique visitors accounting for 299,951 total visits and 4,512,405 total pages visited. The 

Department of Homeland Security represents the single largest user of the site in terms of time spent 

on the TKB, with one DHS server registering 1 week, 3 days, and 16 hours (from 1,637 visits) and 

another registering one week, 2 days, and 21 hours (from 188 visits). Other major government users 

include all branches of the armed services including US Northern Command and the Army Special 

Operations Command, CIA, DIA, DOJ, State, Treasury, and the Coast Guard. Major international 

users included Canada’s Department of National Defense, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 

Customs and Revenue Agency, and Government Telecommunications and Informatics Services; the 

Australian Government Department of Defense and Victoria Police; and Spain’s Ministry of the 

Interior. 

Terrorism Library 

The Terrorism Library (TL) of MIPT has one of the largest publicly available print collections of 

terrorism-related resources, which includes over 2,000 books, 1,100 reports and articles, and 600 

electronic resources. MIPT’s library staff also monitors over 30 electronic mailing lists on topics 

such as terrorism, emergency responders, emergency management, and weapons of mass 

destruction, and makes available any other information that is deemed pertinent. Reference service 

is available by telephone at (405) 278-6311 or e-mail at library@mipt.org. 

Summary 

In summary, ODP and its partners have established programs to provide a wealth of critically needed 

information to the emergency responder community. The SAVER, LLIS, RKP, TKB, and TL are 

readily available through the internet, reports, or direct contact with the programs and are designed 

to provide knowledge resources needed by emergency responders to accomplish their homeland 

security mission.