Disaster Recovery Steps Up With New Cisco NERVs

As hurricane season in the southern United States hits its stride and damage from the first storm of the season is cleared, government agencies at all levels are continuing their preparations for the months ahead. Meanwhile, deadly tornado outbreaks continue to sweep across the middle of the United States, leaving many communities without basic government services.

As disaster recovery efforts continue for these and other weather events, one thing is clear; the damage to infrastructure is immediate and often long-term. This includes taking down critical communications networks needed to coordinate search and rescue, recovery, and emergency services. In response, the Cisco Crisis Response team has outfitted two new assets to help—the Cisco® Network Emergency Response Vehicles (NERVs).

How Cisco helps with disaster recovery

Cisco NERVs are operated by Cisco Crisis Response, a small team of technical engineers, operations experts, and logistics coordinators who work in tandem with an extended group of more than 500 Cisco volunteers, known as the CCR Community. The NERVs are part of a suite of solutions that include trailers and portable kits, with similar yet less extensive capabilities than the NERVs. When disaster strikes, including cyberattacks, Cisco NERVs can provide impacted communities with disaster recovery capabilities to:

• Rapidly deploy field mobile communications: Each vehicle exceeds the National Incident Management System (NIMS) standards for Type III Mobile Communication Centers and provides up to 3 days of continuous operations before requiring utility power or refuel. Cisco NERVs also operate seamlessly with police, fire, emergency medical services, National Guard, and other responders within an incident command system or unified command structure. Plus, they receive 24-hour, proactive intelligence and logistical support from Cisco Operations Centers.
• Deploy anywhere, and with confidence, to assist with disaster recovery: The Cisco NERV is a self-contained vehicle in which all technology travels together as a preconfigured package. Once on scene, the Cisco NERV can be fully operational within 15 minutes, shut down within 15 minutes in order to redeploy to another location, and power its systems using its on-board battery pack, multiple generators, or external shore power connection.
• Enable automated and secure cloud-enabled communications: Each Cisco NERV uses an IP network foundation and Internet-based voice/video platforms to scale communications beyond the range of traditional push-to-talk (PTT) radio and repeaters. This approach ensures response organizations can engage and employ all available resources on-scene, regardless of where important resources geographically reside, interoperate with existing communications systems, enable access to cloud applications, and provide a path to emerging internet based communications systems.

Cisco technology for disaster recovery

“When communications infrastructure has been compromised, the truck is designed to roll on to the scene and re-establish communications for emergency responders,” stated Joseph Harrison, global communications manager for Cisco Crisis Response. “That would include public and private agencies, like local and state emergency response and on up to federal agencies, like FEMA. But also, nonprofits and other organizations that work together to provide support to affected communities.”

A NERV is located on each coast of the United States. One in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and the other in San Jose, California. They replace two older vehicles that served a similar disaster recovery role for fifteen years. But the new vehicles offer more advanced Cisco and Cisco Meraki solutions that can be sent to the scene of a disaster immediately to setup fast, low-latency secure connections for first responders and others. This suite of communications options includes:

• Wired, cellular and WiFi wireless
• Cisco Webex for video collaboration
• Integration with Webex Desk Pro and Webex Cameras
• Meraki Internet of Things (IoT) and smart-camera technology to supply constant data, monitoring, and control of systems and the surrounding environment.

According to Matt Runyan, CCR’s mission readiness and deployments lead, “On the networking side we decided on fully redundant components. The new trucks are Meraki network based. So, we have wireless access points, as well as a hyperflex compute-cluster. And we have dual switches, dual security, and dual servers, while still using less energy than the older trucks.”

How to engage our Cisco Crisis Response team

Cisco Crisis Response leverages our people, technology, and financial resources to support nonprofit and emergency response partners that are working tirelessly on disaster preparedness and response. Cisco NERVs are available for disaster recovery assistance throughout the continental United States, during the acute phase of an emergency. To engage the Cisco NERV, or any of the other services provided by Cisco Crisis Response, please contact your Cisco account team.

Also, check out our additional resources for state and local governments:

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