IP Telephony

Contact Centers

Mobility

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Services

Alone in the Silence:

COMMUNICATIONS THE REAL DISASTER PRIORITY

COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

Disaster planning for major events and

large populations is often absent.

Leaders in all sectors can work

together to change that.

New models can be found that define

temporary emergency roles for existing,

deployed equipment and skilled personnel.

COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

Disaster preparedness and disaster recovery, especially since 2004, loom as a leading

global challenge, and the recent past may well be remembered as the decade of sudden

disasters. What is such a disaster? Many are natural — 3.3 million homeless in a Pakistan

earthquake; thousands of miles of populous coastline devastated and 175,000 people

dead because of an Indian Ocean tsunami; a million people displaced by hurricanes

in North America. Other sudden disasters are marked not by scale so much as public

fear and anguish — such as terrorist attacks in the Middle East or Ukraine, or London or

Madrid or New York. But in any disaster, the functional casualty that soon rivets public

awareness along with news of injury, hunger and exposure is confusion from the absence

of communications. The afflicted may be cut off, evacuation blocked, and aid delayed as

rescue falters for want of communications.

In disaster, the lack of communications is felt immediately, and its continued absence

prolongs suffering and loss. Ask anyone who has been through a disaster: “We wondered

if anybody knew about us.” Ask those who have served in a disaster recovery: “We didn’t

know the status or needs of the affected.” Or those charged with minimizing disasters’

effects: “Our rescue plans depended on communications, but there was none.”

Memories fade, but the urgency of disaster planning for security and recovery is enduring.

As an investment, disaster planning pays off when continuity prevails, its value invisible,

the avoidance of loss.

But global leaders must demand that investment. To make the investment efficient, what

kinds of shared models might be available?

Avaya’s experience suggests that efforts to build shared models for sustaining

communications during disaster deserve the highest priority. Avaya participated in the

recent American Red Cross call to action following North America’s Hurricane Katrina.

Based on that and a history of collaboration with public and private sector leaders,

Avaya in this document seeks to promote discussion of an underused source of disaster

preparedness and recovery — the planned sharing of privately held communications

equipment, applications and talent that can enhance the responsiveness of government,

relief organizations and business after major disruptions.

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avaya.com COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

The problem: communications is too

often the disaster within the disaster

Disasters of recent years and for the foreseeable future

have not only hurt the innocent but destroyed the very

fabric that makes response possible.

• In the Bam, Iran, earthquake of 2004, communications

bottlenecks at small airports prevented aid from

getting through.

• United States national leaders during hours and even

days following a massive hurricane were learning of

humanitarian needs not through planned emergency

channels but from the news media.

• In Pakistan 80,000 lives were lost in part because

victims could not be located owing to the absence of

communications links to remote areas.

• In the World Trade Center attacks, duplicated and backup

communications intended to ensure continuity were

useless because both primary and secondary facilities

passed through the same physical locations.

• During London bus bombings, the rapid dissemination

of news resulted in congestion and paralysis of the

mobile calling network — not a surprise, perhaps, but

another reminder that communications advances bring

new complications to public emergencies.

As for disaster preparedness, communications is often the

missing link at the planning table: Geophysicists at stations

around the world detected the undersea earthquake of

December 26, 2004. But communications planning that

included notification protocols would have enabled them to

warn the countries with endangered shorelines.

Communications: common thread in

disaster, too often a broken strand

Communications disasters affect telecommunications

facilities — public networks that carry voice and data

over distances, wireless facilities for first responders,

emergency deployable communications units, and

satellite carrier services. And they may impact

communications applications, such as call centers

for human services and family aid, and broadcast

messaging for group and public alerts and coordination

of emergency activities. Yet just when any connection

may be a matter of life and death, systems that carry

them are stressed beyond their limits. In the aftermath

of Hurricane Katrina, the American Red Cross found

the scope of disaster, already overwhelming in physical

scale, to be exacerbated by the widespread absence of

communications.

The challenge of communications continuity is

different in the Internet era. Over the past two decades

centralized authority over communications has lessened.

Many national telephone networks were accountable

for and capable of overseeing emergency planning and

disaster response. Among other things, those authorities

mandated standards of interoperability that eased

communications recovery.

While central authority and funding for just-in-case

resources through high tariffs may be reduced, the range

of communications resources has expanded. Phone calls

reach a person anywhere as individuals move among wire-

less networks of diverse types. People operate automated

systems with speech response systems. They receive email

and hear it read to them as if it were voicemail. They can

be notified automatically by triggers, which may be a data

point in a process or a caller with a word of distress — or

even a distressed tone of voice. Triggers can be transmitted

automatically as messages or phone calls to a hierarchy

of decision makers. Call centers can scale up rapidly, as

linked multiple call centers in a dispersed, virtual domain.

Advanced communications is at cost levels within reach of

many nations and is obtainable by owning applications or

buying services from providers on demand.

But communications architectures of today still have

interoperability challenges. As dependencies on commu-

nications multiply, we must now regain a needed level of

coordination among diverse resources so that communica-

tions remains ready — and does not itself compound a

disaster when it must serve as the heart of recovery.

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COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

The solution: shared planning to

prepare and recover communications

New plans are needed for communications resource

deployment to prevent and ease emergencies. It is time

to look to all owners of communications resources; some

are in the public sector and relief organizations, some

in telecommunications companies. However, to extend

those resources, we must harness the underused or

sharable communications resources of enterprises and

organizations that own communications.

The illustration below, depicts the complexity of opti-

mally sustaining communications under duress, par-

ticularly when large populations are affected. Disaster

services that may be required are diverse — police,

medical facilities, radio and television, government

agencies, insurance companies, and others. In every

region these will vary according to economic and social

models. Response models that are strong at the outset

in command and control, owing to foresight and robust

planning, are often not planned to scale up to meet the

needs of large populations with limited infrastructure

and geographical challenges.

Response models that address large scale disasters are

in development in the communications and information

technology sectors, such as the initiative of the American

Red Cross following Hurricane Katrina in late August

2005. The American Red Cross convened major technol-

ogy companies, including Avaya Inc., to urgently respond

to the unprecedented scale of disaster in the southern

United States. Participants set aside competitive interests

and successfully and quickly devised and implemented

solutions to re-establish vital technology infrastructure,

providing new temporary communications capability to

support delivery of American Red Cross and partner agen-

cies’ disaster services.

In disasters, focus from the outside in

Communications provides support for a wide variety of organizations whose coordinated response delivers care to victims and others affected. Initial

disaster responses based on effective command and control (from the inside out) often do not extend broadly to support the diverse sources of aid, nor

enable that aid to reach the victims at the perimeter of need. This need requires partnerships of a type only beginning to get attention. It may be met

by joint planning among the public sector and the many businesses and organizations whose communications can be planned for readiness in disasters

and to compensate for missing communications. The measure of success is how quickly care is delivered to the perimeter of need.

Conventional limited communications planning Communications based on collaborative planning

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avaya.com COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

“We knew that private companies can make a broader,

more significant contribution than we can achieve

by ourselves, but the help has to be immediate,

blueprinted in advance, and it has to fit with established

disaster recovery models,” says Steve Cooper, senior

vice president and chief information officer with the

American Red Cross. Today the American Red Cross

is forming a crisis partnership with many of its post-

Katrina team to enable companies to support relief efforts

based on predefined roles and shared resources. These

organizations are anticipated to meet regularly beginning

in 2006 and will include suppliers of telecommunications

and of data and voice applications and equipment.

A shared model for disaster response is attracting global

interest. According to Robert E. Bellhouse, executive

director of the Disaster Resource Network of the World

Economic Forum, “Fully coordinated, scalable and

integrated communications capabilities are the critical

element in any effective disaster assistance effort. The

communications industry, including public carriers

and manufacturers of communications systems and

software, must develop realistic integrated plans for

disaster situations.” Bellhouse envisions an integrated

communications sector approach, modeled in part

on DRN’s successful deployment of volunteers in the

logistics and healthcare sectors.

From a governance point of view, two solution

frameworks emerge where private and public

communications resources can converge in disasters.

Collaboration core. In disaster an array of constituents

arise suddenly and require diverse resources for which

planning must already have taken place: victims, shel-

ters, mission controllers (relief agencies), volunteers,

and third parties such as hospitals, energy utilities,

and insurance companies. Around these constituents,

businesses, relief agencies and government can jointly

design a communications “architecture for disasters,”

specifying resources, planning for their donation or shar-

ing, and drawing scenarios for deployment. Critical com-

munications backup can be provided across

IP infrastructure to remote facilities without regard to

distance or location. Collaborating planners can expose

and correct or at least plan to avert interoperability

issues that may frustrate a disaster response.

Extended resources. Emergency virtual networks of

disaster volunteers and first responders can be defined

when multiple parties commit themselves to regional

disaster planning. The flexible base of modern voice

and data communications, mobility- and Internet-

enabled, is spreading rapidly, while it continues to serve

organizations and hundreds of millions of users still using

traditional telephony. Key among the extended base must

be the employees of organizations familiar with regional

communications characteristics both new and old.

When models for shared emergency technology

deployment are agreed to, and blueprints for continuity

and recovery are pre-defined ahead of time, what can we

predict for disasters of the future?

• Much larger pools of workers will become free

to participate as emergency responders owing to

employees’ use of mobile communications. Adoption

of mobile communications now exceeds 40 percent in

many regions, and home broadband in many countries

is expected to reach 60 percent. Workers with critical

skills in emergency response will be liberated for voice

and data communications from any location. The result:

a greatly expanded base of workers who can be linked

for participation in disasters.

• Volunteers in any sector willing to apply their skills in a

disaster will enroll and coalesce as sub-communities

A Model of Private Participation in Global Disaster Recovery

Initiated by the World Economic Forum’s Disaster Resource Network and working with the air carrier DHL Worldwide, a core of

volunteers has been identified within the ranks of air carriers, experts in airport logistics, to fly in and expedite delivery of

disaster relief. The result helps eliminate bottlenecks at airports unprepared for high volumes of urgent traffic.

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COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

of responders marshaled during emergencies by

focused broadcast communications guided by joint

public-private planning. Registrants’ availability for

communications will be known by automated systems

to speed the reaching of individuals best able to

act. The result: rapid deployment of communications

technicians and other specialists based on precise

geographic and skill requirements, not only within

organizations but also across regions.

• A million miles of fiber-optic (broadband) transmission

facilities owned or controlled by government

organizations and non-communications companies

can be tapped as backup in emergencies. Regional

joint planners will ensure these are ready for linkage

to satellite networks. The result: geographically

dispersed resources able to serve in recovery

scenarios far distant.

• Victims will gather around emergency communications

vehicles or dropped-in communications units

equipped with mobile phones and Internet

connectivity, enabling prompt communication with

relatives and helpers. The vehicles, driven to a scene

of destruction, will link to prearranged satellite

circuits and carry any communications that might

support victims. The result: easing of victims’ isolation

and sense of abandonment even as evacuation or

shelter plans are formed.

• Organizations will make more use of existing

communications features, such as emergency dialing.

Emergency calls can be heard not just by emergency

teams but also by designated helpers within the

organization from which the call emanates. The

result: while waiting for an ambulance or fire truck,

designated individuals very close to an emergency

can move to the distressed individuals and administer

initial relief.

• By 2008, half of the phone lines in use by large

enterprises in North America and Europe and 35 percent

in Asia will be IP, thereby acquiring a fundamental

capability for flexible, planned redeployment. Internet-

enabled technologies, such as session initiation

protocol (SIP), web services, and presence awareness,

promise interoperability to allow access by employees,

customers, suppliers, partners, and communities

to private communications supplementing public

emergency resources. Result: resource sharing

in disasters and payoff from joint public-private

preparedness planning.

What is the leadership point of action?

In disaster readiness and response, communications

has emerged as a key resource for enabling responders

to determine the right actions, ordering and monitoring

relief activity, and avoiding confusion, waste and loss

of time. Only government and industry leaders can

prioritize communications as a critical resource for

continuity and recovery. As the World Economic Forum’s

2004 Global Governance Initiative Annual Report notes,

global objectives like the United Nations Millennium

Development Goals require public-private partnerships to

complement activity by governments.

Leaders must act together and continue to develop the

shared models for planning and action that are emerging

today. Directives and organizations are pointing the way:

• the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian

Affairs of the United Nations,

• the United States Agency for International Development,

• the United Nations’ Tampere Convention,

• the Secretariat of the Working Group on Emergency

Telecommunications at the United Nations Office for

Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,

• the United Nations Foundation,

• the American Red Cross, and others.

Under auspices such as these government and

technology leaders must convene and collaborate on

blueprints for defined technologies deployable by teams

of communications experts and volunteers prepared in

advance for their roles in a crisis.

Only business leaders can mandate that their organizations

invest time and share what can properly be lent — expertise

always, resources often, and a vision that balances the

needs of business with the vulnerability of victims.

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COMMUNICATIONS AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

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