DHS drill leads to formation of Virtual Operation Support Team in Washington state

As part of a simulation last year, digital disaster services volunteers from Whatcom County, Washington, and the Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada, practiced discerning fact from fiction online to keep responders informed during the hypothetical eruption of Mt. Baker, an active volcano in the Pacific Northwest.

The drill was part of the fifth Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resiliency Experiment (CAUSE V) event in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and Defense Research and Development Canada’s Center for Security Science (DRDC CSS) ran drills with local response communities.

“We had positive results experimenting with social media in CAUSE IV, so the volcanic eruption scenario was a good fit for the added twist of identifying false or misleading information,” Denis Gusty, the program manager for CAUSE series at S&T FRG, said. “The local stakeholders were on board with the idea, so we ran with it.”

Alisha King, an emergency manager with the State of Washington, coordinated and taught social media analysis training sessions for the volunteers which covered open-source intelligence gathering and identification of misinformation and were sponsored by the S&T First Responders Group.

Alisha King and Eli King, an emergency manager at the University of Washington and fellow team lead, identified long-term benefits associated with creating a formalized virtual operations group. Whatcom County volunteers, professional emergency managers, and public information officers then formed the Cascadia Virtual Operation Support Team (VOST).

When an Amtrak train derailed onto a highway in DuPont, Washington on December 19, 2017, the Washington Department of Transportation reached out to Cascadia VOST and WaTech, the centralized technology agency for the State of Washington, for help.During a rivalry football game between the University of Washington Huskies and the Washington State University Cougars in November 2017, VOST members provided intelligence that was used to brief law enforcement at the event.

“It’s wonderful to see the work of DHS S&T live on after CAUSE V and provide valuable and tangible benefits to local communities,” Alisha King said.