Why New Technologies Rarely Show Up at Disasters

Posted by admin on Jan 21, 2010 at 11:01 am America/Chicago

I’m getting a lot of questions about why wasn’t CRASAR, or any robotic technology, in Haiti. Interestingly, some of the questions indicate anger at agencies and while I thought CRASAR could have been of use in saving lives and learned important lessons for science, I’d like to defend the decision not to invite us. It is always a difficult call for an incident commander to bring in new technology that they have not trained with or has been shown definitely to work. A disaster is just that—it’s usually a surprise and by definition exceeds resources. So the command structure is busy just trying to do the regular things of getting traditional resources to the right place. And people under stress fall back to the things they are most comfortable with. Consider too, the individual responders are too tired and stressed to take on out new equipment (more things to lug around) even if they are familiar with it.  That’s why for the first 4 years following 9/11, I gave nearly a hundred talks to response agencies and participated in many exercises so that we could show the responders what the robots could do and get their comfort level up. We created a 2-hour awareness course and a 10 hour introductory course that responders could get continuing ed credits for. The role of giving responders hands-on time with robots has largely been taken over by NIST and their rescue robot standards program. And remember most new equipment has terrible interfaces and ergonomics, so it is a true pain to use.  This means bringing trained operators to use the equipment on behalf of the responders adds to the logistics footprint- here’s a couple more people that aren’t on the official roster and have to be accounted for.  And the tech operators may have no experience or response training- and there are basic procedures and terminology that you need to know. The liability and logistics is just hard. It is way easier for the incident commander to just to say “no.” CRASAR is all about the technicians getting response training so we won’t be a burden or a liability. Also keep in mind that disasters always bring out people who are well-intentioned but have no clue whatsoever. I have some horror stories from the Crandall Canyon Utah mine disaster so I can definitely sympathize with the incident commanders.  The fire service typically just says “no” based on past experiences because they don’t have time to get distracted with such things—so if they didn’t know you and felt comfortable with you before a disaster, you aren’t likely to get your foot in the door. Trying to pressure them just makes it worse for the rest of us.  The robots used at 9/11 were invited by the NY State and City emergency departments through the connections of Lois Clark McCoy at NIUSR, but the responders viewed them warily and did not take us to the field. John Blitch led a small group that used the robots on the first day but the second day when you couldn't get to the site without being part of a tasked assignment, we just sat there. A guy from a major government lab in a suit was wandering around the Javits Center where all the response teams were housed talking about how great the lab’s sensors were. (Back up- A guy in a suit. At a disaster site. That certainly undermined any credibility that these guys had ever stepped outside of their lab, much less did rigorous field testing. ) Then suddenly the FEMA teams started asking for us to come with them- primarily because Chief Ron Rodgers (bless him!) at Florida Task Force 3 posted to a responder chat room that my group had worked with him in the field and the students and I had completed basic response training. We became known quantities. There’s also a matter of scale. The incident command team is responsible for doing the most good for the most people. Will a couple (or even a hundred) of experimental technologies really make a difference and be worth the disruption to the already stressful way of doing things and additional personnel and logistics burden? Or is a more rational decision to focus on doing the basics?  That’s the incident command teams call and I respect that. The point is not whether CRASAR participates in a disaster  but rather whether we are getting closer to the day when the responders routinely take the robots and other technologies that they own and operate to the incident- that’s our mission.