North Texas Uses Digital Sandbox's Risk Analysis Center to Manage Risk at Super Bowl XLV

MCLEAN, Va., March 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Contending with freak snow and ice storms, massive crowds, and numerous planned and unplanned events across multiple jurisdictions, public safety officials in North Texas used Digital Sandbox's Risk Analysis Center (RAC) to understand the risks associated with the week-long Super Bowl festivities and actively monitor emerging threat and risk situations.  With hundreds of sanctioned and unsanctioned events occurring at dozens of venues across the region, analysts, field commanders, and senior leaders used the RAC's Threat and Risk Monitoring applications to create shared situational awareness, prioritize actions, and reduce reaction times to emerging threats and risks.  For the first time, mobile applications were deployed to provide seamless transmittal of information between field and command center personnel.

"Digital Sandbox's RAC provided my team with exceptional situational awareness throughout the entire Super Bowl period," commented Arlington Assistant Chief of the Support Operations Bureau, Will Johnson (Incident Commander of the Super Bowl XLV Public Safety Team).  "Their 24/7 dynamic presentation of data about Super Bowl events, critical infrastructure, calls for service, and possible threat situations gave us the right amount of information to stay on top of the risk associated with such a complex event."

"At any moment, we could look at the RAC Common Operating Picture in the EOC and view the location of Super Bowl parties; flash gatherings; police, fire, and emergency medical calls for service; locations of reported suspicious activities; and the position of emergency vehicles," added Irish Hancock, Arlington Fire Department's Emergency Management Administrator.  

"The RAC's technology was particularly helpful to our area command in support of this North Texas event," said Deputy Chief Brian Harvey, Commander of the Compstat Division.  "We were able to monitor calls for service as well as track events visually throughout the operational period.  We also had the flexibility to enter events immediately when necessary.  The Super Bowl experience has demonstrated the importance of collecting this data in an easily viewable format to help us manage these events."

Police, Fire-Rescue, Emergency Management and government administrators across the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington region have been using the Risk Analysis Center since 2009 to manage the region's preparedness for all hazards threats and risk.  "We believe that managing risk in a complex region like North Texas is an everyday job that includes many jurisdictions and disciplines.  Complex, highly visible events like a Super Bowl simply shine a brighter light on a region's preparedness and place a premium on sharing and prioritizing threat and risk information," said Anthony F. Beverina, Digital Sandbox's President.  "Our job was to create a risk management ecosystem of operation center personnel at a dozen centers, field intelligence teams, and field commanders to create a shared, real-time network for managing risk.  I believe we met that challenge, and was inspired and proud to watch the group of professionals in North Texas provide the safest Super Bowl event to date."

"We learned a lot from our use of the RAC in the Fort Worth EOC and we are already compiling lessons learned and ideas on how to integrate its applications with other core systems to best take advantage of the information available, and the experienced personnel we have to better safeguard our community" added Keith Wells, Fort Worth Senior Emergency Management Officer.

In addition to Super Bowl XLV, Digital Sandbox solutions have been used for other high-visibility special events including Super Bowl XLIII, Major League and NBA All-Star Games, Stanley Cup Finals, and numerous high profile visits by Presidents and Presidential candidates.

Digital Sandbox provides analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, enabling them to optimize their strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions for risk-based resource allocation. Since 1998, Digital Sandbox's analytic risk management solutions have helped customers in the public safety, corporate, and homeland security fields lower their risk exposure, increase the impact of their risk management budgets, and maximize the effectiveness of their resources. Visit Digital Sandbox on the Web at www.dsbox.com.

SOURCE Digital Sandbox, Inc.