Duval County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) When all normal means of communications fail!

PART 3: HOW DO WE DEVELOP OUR PLANS?

COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING

Communications planning is kind of like building a project from an Erector Set or Lego. You usually start with a daunting array of parts, and an idea of what you want to build. If you give the project some thought before you start, you may make some notes or sketches which reflect sub-components of the desired product. Some of your plans will work well, and some will not. There is a fair amount of trial-and-error involved in completing a project, and the best projects are the results of a series of improvements and enhancements based on experience.

When we talk about planning for a communications emergency, the first step is to decide what we hope to accomplish (a goal statement, and perhaps some measurable objectives). It is difficult to talk about specific goals and objectives for an emergency without knowing how things work under normal circumstances. Sometimes this means that some research must be conducted to learn how a served agency currently communicates, and what components are expected to break down in an emergency. Once we have a goal statement and objectives, its like knowing what we want to build from our Erector set.

The next step in planning is to look at the resources we have available to accomplish our goal. Our resources tend to fit into one of 3 main categories: 1) Human resources (i.e. ARES members other volunteers); 2) Hardware resources (i.e. all kinds of radios and communications equipment); and 3) Software Resources (including all kinds of plans, policies, procedures, lists, forms, media and computer programs). All of these resources are like an Erector Set kit - we have a wide variety resources, now all we need to do is put them together.

When building an Erector Set project, it is advisable to unpack all of the parts available and lay them out so each one may be easily seen. By the same token, it is important in communications planning to have a complete inventory of resources available. If a resource is not listed in the inventory, it is likely to be overlooked by the planner, and the end result invariably suffers. Just as a toy builder has a difficult time building a car if he forgets he has a set of wheels in his kit, a communications planner will have a difficult time building a dependable communications system if he forgets that many of his team members have cell phones!

More complicated projects are often the result of combining two or more simple components. For example, if our toy builder has a built a flat-bed truck and also built an electric winch, it is a relatively simple project to put together a tow truck! By the same token, a 2m directed net may be combined with an HF Gateway station to provide communications between a remote state command-post and a number of local agencies.

Since emergencies always include a bit of the unpredictable, it will not be possible for any plan to address every conceivable challenge, just as the instruction manual for the Erector Set cannot possibly hope to provide details on every conceivable project. However, it is possible to provide details on a variety of communications setups which are likely to be helpful in solving most common communications problems. Thus, the plans presented here are like the instruction manual for our Erector Set - they won't solve every problem, but they will make solving most problems easier.

A second analogy my help clarify the communications plan further. A football team has one main objective (scoring more touchdowns than their opponents) and a fixed number of players. However, the combination of conceivable plays a team can use is practically infinite. It would be possible for a team to show up at a game with no plays in mind, but it would also be foolish. As we know, the best teams have a set of plays that they use and practice on a regular basis. These plays take into account the strengths of the team, and provide a quick solution to common challenges. Each player on the team knows the plays by heart because he has practiced them enough to implement them under enormous stress. The pre-defined play puts all the players on the same page, and allows the team to get down to business with a minimum of wasted time.

Communications plans are little more than "plays" for "teams" of communicators. The better the plans and the practice, the better the "team's" performance. We'll use this analogy to make one more point before moving on. A typical college football team looses 1/4 of its members each year to graduation. Attrition and injuries bring that annual turnover fraction to closer to 1/3 of the team. With this in mind, its not hard to see why football teams have play books. If the plays were not committed to writing, most of the knowledge they reflected would be lost due to turnover.

Fortunately, ARES volunteers are a bit more stable than college athletes, but there is still a significant turnover, both in leadership and in member-volunteers. One of the main reasons we take the time to commit our plans to writing is to preserve all of our lessons- learned for the future. Without written plans, we would most likely find ourselves "re-inventing the wheel" every few years. As the makeup of the team and the expectations of our served agencies change, obviously our plans must change as well. Accordingly your communications plans must find a healthy balance between being permanent and flexible.

In the following pages, all of the resources normally available to the Duval County ARES will be itemized. These are the tools and the parts we use to build our "Erector Set" These resources are divided into 3 categories:

1. Human resources (i.e. ARES members other volunteers);
2. Hardware resources (i.e. all kinds of radios and communications equipment); and
3. Software Resources (including all kinds of plans, policies, procedures, lists, forms, media and computer programs).

Communications Resources