Wednesday, December 8, 2004
The Journal Gazette - by Dan Stockman

Emergency Center Gets Local Debut
Crisis-command hub to be U.S. first

Fort Wayne could soon be home to a first-in-the-nation command and control center for handling emergencies from blizzards to floods to terrorist attacks, thanks to a gift from software company FourthWave.

The only cost to the city, officials told the Fort Wayne City Council on Tuesday, would be rent for the space in FourthWave’s downtown building.

The center would be a high-tech room filled with computers, video screens and, most important, SentryPoints’ command and control software, the same core software used by battlefield commanders in Iraq. SentryPoints is the homeland security division of FourthWave.

“There is no other thing like this anywhere,” said Don Willis, FourthWave founder and chairman.

Hundreds of cities have emergency operations centers, Willis said, but they consist mostly of rooms with radios in them. What they lack is information. Enter SentryPoints.

In 1989, Willis left Magnavox to form Command System Inc., which developed software for the defense industry to let commanders and soldiers make battlefield decisions while the battle was being fought. The system was designed to operate over any communications system and be configured in any way needed, but also to integrate across many different areas. Willis later sold Command System to General Dynamics for almost $100 million, but he kept the rights to the software for purposes other than defense.

SentryPoints uses that same software to let city leaders make battlefield-type decisions to manage emergencies including terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Where most incident command scenarios consider only police and fire resources, Willis said, SentryPoints integrates every resource the city has at its disposal.

He likened the system to the captain’s bridge on an aircraft carrier, where admirals direct attacks and plot the battle. Down below, another center carries out those commands, dispatching aircraft and overseeing refueling and armaments.

“It is the place you go to run the operation,” Willis said.

In the city’s case, the mayor would direct responses to emergencies from the control center in the FourthWave Building, and the emergency operations center in the City-County Building would execute the plans. The system would also be linked to the public safety training center planned for the Southtown Mall site.

After the center is in operation – and FourthWave President Tom Teague said it could open 45 days after the agreement is signed – it can be used as a regional or national training center. It will also be a hands-on demonstration for SentryPoints to use to sell the system to other cities, which could reap millions of dollars in sales for the firm.

A year ago, FourthWave officials showed off SentryPoints’ software at the U.S. Conference of Mayors national convention in Miami, which led to requests for demonstrations in Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta and Tampa, Fla.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing for homeland security, but no one, Willis contends, knows how to best manage the resources purchased with the money during an emergency.

Officials from Baltimore were in Fort Wayne on Tuesday to view the system at FourthWave, and Teague indicated they might be the first city to purchase the system. But Fort Wayne will be the first to have it up and running, thanks to the gift from FourthWave.

“It’s good for our company,” Teague said. “We – believe it or not – in Fort Wayne, Indiana, will be the model for the nation.”

Officials estimated it will cost about $100,000 to create the center, which includes an adjacent training room that during emergencies would become a media room to more easily get information quickly and accurately to the public.

The estimated cost for the center does not include the cost of the SentryPoints software.

Deputy Mayor Al Moll said the idea was only presented in the last week and will not influence a decision on another offer from FourthWave: to provide software to run much of the city. Moll said officials had been looking for software to run things such as payroll and a 3-1-1 non-emergency telephone system, but FourthWave officials said they can develop a system that will do all of those things in one integrated package.

“They’re confident they can come up with a competitively priced product that can handle all that,” Moll said. “It would still have to go through the public bid process.”