Va. When an earthquake rumbled through Seattle in February, the Federal Emergency Management Agency rolled into the area with its high-tech equipment to provide support services to the region. It was just another day for FEMA, said Dennis R. DeWalt, the agency's acting chief information officer. The emergency management agency has been using high-end technology to provide speedy transmission of voice, data and video information to help disaster victims recover, he said. Most of the digital effort takes place across FEMA's National Emergency Management Information System. The agency completed its migration to an Oracle8i database just before the Washington quake.
Security is managed by assigning a person to a position in the program.
Each position has a predetermined role with associated access to the system and preset perimeters. Passwords control access once roles have been assigned, he said. Most FEMA disaster workers are removed from the system after the specific disaster they responded to ends, DeWalt said. Also, the role assignment and computer security process is all automated, DeWalt noted. The agency hopes to pilot a wireless LAN version of the system soon and has been studying the possibilities for some time, DeWalt said.