CUSEC deploys Virtual USA
Virtual USA supported the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC) states and partners participating in this week’s 2011 National Level Exercise. During the exercise, Virtual USA was used to discover and share information throughout the region during a mock earthquake event in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
Overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, the program focuses on developing technology, processes, and governance structures to enable secure information sharing across jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries. These capabilities were tested during the NLE, including letting state agencies view real-time data.
CUSEC states and partners also identified seven common data layers they agreed would be most critical when responding to an earthquake, and shared the information via Virtual USA, including real-time status updates from emergency operations centers, hospitals, shelters, communications and power facilities, major highways and roads, as well as casualty reports.
