15 Nov 10. The Israeli Home Front Command (HFC) recently inaugurated Elbit Systems’ Emergency Events Management Training System (the System) by holding its first large scale exercise. The System is stationed at the HFC’s headquarters and supports a unified effort to effectively mitigate any large scale emergency event and continually prepare for the HFC’s mission to prevent, detect, and respond against all hazards. The System includes training capabilities for all types of forces such as NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) and search and rescue as well as the HFC’s other internal training needs. The System also provides training for all the emergency organizations that are involved in response recovery from disaster events in complex, heavily populated urban scenes and strategic infrastructures. The innovative System simulates reliably and realistically for integrated responses to complex emergency events occurring simultaneously in various scenes and sites. The assorted emergency scenarios include intervention of various rescue and life-saving forces that need to coordinate their operations, such as municipal forces, police, Magen David Adom (Israel’s equivalent to the Red Cross), fire fighting forces, etc. The System also allows for rehearsing communication, C4I, management and inter-coordination capabilities to improve force readiness for emergency situations.

15 Nov 10. Co-ordinating military attacks, managing aerial drones and monitoring terrorists online could all become easier with new software under trial by BAE Systems. The family of computer technologies was originally created as part of the UK’s £5.5m ALADDIN project, which was designed to improve the response of emergency services during a disaster. A team of researchers from BAE and the universities of Southampton, Oxford, Bristol and Imperial College London spent five years developing a series of algorithms that allow different computer systems to co-ordinate their actions without a central authority. The project, the title of which stands for Autonomous Learning Agents for Decentralised Data and Information Networks, topped the aerospace and defence category at last year’s The Engineer Technology & Innovation Awards. BAE Systems is now simulating versions of the ALADDIN algorithms applied to 10 operational situations that use computers, including working out the logistics of a supply line and detecting terrorist threats by monitoring internet social networks. (Source: The Engineer Online)