On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, first responders to the disaster at the World Trade Center rolled up on the incident with little understanding of the true severity of the crisis in which they were involved.

Responders did not know that some of them parked heavy fire equipment over four and five story voids that lay beneath thin concrete slabs. They did not have access to structural information concerning the World Trade Center, nor information on the temperatures at which large quantities of aviation fuel would burn, and the impact that those intense fires would have on the remaining structural members of the building. They did not have access to the names or means to immediately reach the key personnel in city government and the architects and engineers who built the World Trade Center and did have access to such vital information.

As a result: fire equipment nearly began to fall through non-supporting concrete pads, command centers were located in the tower lobbies, fire fighters rushed into both towers to try to put out fires that were unquenchable, and people (including first responders) who should have been immediately evacuated from both towers remained in the buildings too long in the floors below the fires, and died when the two towers ultimately and inevitably collapsed.

In the wake of both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon disasters, building and fire officials, emergency personnel, architects, engineers, building owners, and public officials have assessed and discussed actions that could have been taken to perhaps further reduce the loss of lives in future such disasters.

The National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, as a member of the National Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age, participated in several of those discussions and as a result proposed that the Alliance consider amending its adopted Action Agenda to add a new work product that might address the above situation.

That product would be a secure nationwide state-maintained database of the as-built designs, evacuation plans, and key personnel contact information for critical structures that first responders could access as they roll up on the site of a manmade or natural disaster.

At the October 10, 2001, meeting of the Alliance’s Steering Committee held at the National Governors Association in Washington, DC, the Alliance adopted the above item as an addition to their Action Agenda. The task of further developing an outline of such a secure database system was assigned to the Alliance’s Technology Task Force.

This concept paper outlines for that Task Force’s consideration a possible structure and some of the details that would need to be addressed to develop and deploy such a system in this nation.

Over the past ten years firefighters, EMS personnel, and other first responders in a small number of cities around the United States have had access to software and on-line databases that provide them with basic information on hazardous materials in buildings, some basic building designs, and even programs which assist them in planning the best way to attack a fire.

That data, however, has generally been basic in nature. It does not link different jurisdictions that may respond to a disaster situation, and usually has not included critical information regarding the evacuation plans of the building. The data systems are not interoperable.

In conversations with building owners and operators, fire and building officials, engineers, architects, and software vendors, the feasibility of building the following more extensive system has been discussed and is now outlined for the Technology Task Force’s consideration.

The envisioned database would be:

a) Secure (encrypted with limited specific access).

c) Existing evacuation plans for the structure.

e) 24-hour contact information for pertinent experts needed to assess appropriate response to the disaster.

f) Linked and accessible by other jurisdictions responding in support of the event.

2) Delivery On-Site

a) Secure.

b) Available through redundant systems – landlines as well as wireless.

a) How to address security and redundancy of delivery mechanism.

b) How to assure first responders and other users are not overwhelmed with data.

d) Security of proprietary information (architects designs etc.).

e) Potential liability issues for using database (evacuation plans provided by owners).

f) Total cost of developing, implementing and maintaining system.

g) Where to build and test prototype system?

i) Available software and potential software developers (interoperable).

4) Role for the Technology Task Force and the Alliance

b) Develop plan for building a prototype system.

c) Identify appropriate test site.

d) Pursue and obtain funding to building, test, evaluate, modify and deploy the resultant system.