Interagency TAK Use

What is the cost of dot? By dot I mean a Position Location Information or PLI, it is the foundation of the Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK). ATAK enables a team of people on a collective task or mission to know each other’s location on a common map and share information passively or actively. The mission can be small or large in scale. A two man search and rescue team will effortlessly track each other as a 500 person interagency effort will have the same capability. There was an incident where a small group of Firefighters went to clear debris from a river during prescribed burning. One of the team moved by himself to move a log. He fell in the river, was swept downstream. Unharmed, he came out of the river and had to walk back 500 meters to the rest of the team. The rest of the team did not know where he was or his condition. Had ATAK been utilized, the location and status of the team would have been easily known.

ATAK Large Scale Missions

The greatest success garnered from utilizing ATAK is for large planned and unplanned events. Hurricane relief efforts is a great place for ATAK to enable situational awareness, safety and communication. When FEMA is called upon to respond to a disaster a slew of other agencies will fall under the control of FEMA. The agency’s primary purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. The governor of the state in which the disaster occurs must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the President that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster. FEMA gathers some organizations that rarely work together and have different methods of communication and safety standard operating procedures. ATAK will enable properly command and control all the groups there to assist a relief effort. Current ATAK users would receive access to a common server. New users would receive ATAK enabled devices. For members of the team that don’t need a device tracking tags, like ATOS can be assigned. ATAK will enable great accurate accountability even in a environment where communication infrastructure doesn’t exist with the aid of Mobile Ad hoc Networks. ATAK would create a concise PACE plan and keep the mission focused on rescuing citizens. ATAK is slowly be adopted and will be the standard for keep accountability of people. ATAK is free but requires initial training to understand the program. Tough Stump University offers a self-paced training program that will allow ATAK administrators to train a limitless number of folks for $99 a person! That is the cost of a dot. ATAK can save lives.

Tough Stump University – ATAK Training

Inspired by the interagency use of TAK and ATAK large scale missions? Check out Tough Stump University’s TAK U Basic course. Visit us at toughstump.com for more information.