Federated Clouds for Emergency Response

Recent high-profile events (2010 Haitian Earthquake, 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami, 2013 Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda) have highlighted the growing importance played by the international community in successful humanitarian assistance and disaster response. These events also showcased the critical importance of quickly providing robust information technology resources to response effort participants. In June 2010, in support of its continuing effort to foster international collaboration, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) initiated a dialog with the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) to discuss this and other aspects of geospatial data information-sharing across the international community. In response to this request the NCOIC through the use of a cloud services brokerage paradigm, built and demonstrated a federated cloud computing infrastructure capable of managing the electronic exchange of geospatial data. The effort also led to the development of the more generalized NCOIC Rapid Response Capability Pattern (NRRC), a process that could improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of emergency situations that require an international joint civilian/military response.

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