Abused By Illusions

ESS to test the company's new on-demand Crisis Management software during the event

TEMPE, Ariz. – August 14, 2006 – ESS today announced its participation in Strong Angel III, a collaborative demonstration of civil and military cooperation and communication capabilities put together by a partnership of private companies, government agencies, humanitarian and relief agencies and universities. Hosted by San Diego State University and taking place in San Diego August 21-26, Strong Angel III will field test effective means of delivering life-saving humanitarian relief and rapidly deployable communications systems in the wake of major disasters.

The core site for Strong Angel III will be the operations center at the San Diego Fire Department Fire Rescue Training Facility site, located at the former Naval Training Center near downtown San Diego. San Diego State University's Visualization Center will be a secondary location.

The Strong Angel III demonstration simulates the impact on information sharing in a real-world disaster. The demonstration will assume the context of a worldwide pandemic caused by a highly contagious virus, which is further complicated by a wave of cyber-attacks inflicted by terrorists that cripple critical local infrastructure and systems. Strong Angel III team members will conduct field trials and demonstrations of solutions that address 49 specific humanitarian relief challenges – both technical and social – that have not yet been adequately overcome in real disaster relief efforts.

"In the wake of major incidents like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Southeast Asia, it is more important than ever to have an integrated response when disaster strikes," said Eric Rasmussen, MD, director of Strong Angel III and professor at San Diego State University. "The level of public-and private-sector engagement in Strong Angel III is at a remarkable level, underscoring the significance of the task at hand and the commitment of everyone involved to work together to maximize preparedness and coordination efforts."

Some of the demonstrations will include developing solutions for redundant power, adaptive communications, austere network communications, mobile workers, cross-organizational collaboration, mesh networking, satellite services, ephemeral workgroups, geospatial information systems, rapid assessment techniques, shared situational awareness, cyber-security, alerting tools, community informatics, machine-based translation for multi-lingual communication, and social network development.

Strong Angel III sponsors include Google, Cisco Systems, CommsFirst, Microsoft, Save the Children, Sprint Nextel, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

ESS will participate as part of a team from the National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue (NIUSR) and will also test its new Crisis Management application during the exercise. John Gargett, Product Manager for Crisis Management at ESS and a member of the NIUSR Executive Board, will serve as Team NIUSR Command. Other ESS staff members on Team NIUSR include Chuck Mancini, National Solutions Manager – Crisis Management for ESS, as IT Unit Specialist; Tony Bellomo, ESS Senior Technical Consultant, as IT Director; John Ketcham, Crisis Management Practice Manager at ESS, as Situation Unit Leader; and Curtis Moreland, Director of Information Technology at ESS, as Server Manager.

"ESS is committed to the Crisis Management community and to helping with the successful execution of this valuable event," said Robert Johnson, CEO of ESS. "Being able to test our new product during an exercise of this magnitude is a great opportunity."

Louis Clark McCoy, President of NIUSR, said, "We are excited about the participation of ESS in this important activity. Using the ESS application to manage certain aspects of Strong Angel III will provide us with a number of benefits, both during the event and for post-event metrics that will help us measure the success of the exercise."

The new application, on-demand emergency response product by ESS, will be used for a variety of activities during Strong Angel, including monitoring unit logs, incident logs, resource deployments, personnel deployments and Incident Command System (ICS) position checklists. The software is designed to help organizations respond to any kind of incident – big or small, short- or long-term – by making it easy to perform a range of essential tasks.

"We are looking forward to this exercise," said Gargett. "You can never do too much to prepare for real-world disasters and our interest in this is two-fold, in terms of helping to mitigate the impact of a disaster through practice as well as enhanced technology."

About Strong Angel III

Strong Angel III is the third in a series of demonstrations that have taken place since 2000. The first two Strong Angel demonstrations were held in 2000 and 2004 in Hawaii associated with the joint Naval exercises called RIMPAC. Strong Angel III will issue a lessons-learned document on its website as soon as possible after conclusion of the demonstration. For more information on Strong Angel III and a listing of participating public- and private-sector organizations, please visit www.strongangel3.net.

About ESS

ESS is a leading provider of Operational Risk Management software and services for Environmental, Health & Safety (EH&S) and Crisis Management. The company has provided Essential Suite™ and Compliance Suite™ solutions to more than 17,000 businesses, government agencies and other organizations worldwide.

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