It’s that time of year again… Fires in the west, Tornadoes in the middle, and Hurricanes in the east. And no matter your take on climate change, the data clearly show that these types of “once in a lifetime” weather events are more and more frequent, and more and more severe. It’s almost its own season, and this year is certainly no exception. In fact, this year we have the unique, first time experience of TWIN hurricanes headed towards the Gulf coast. And if there is one thing we can be sure of… it won’t be the last.
When these events happen, one thing that is constant is the need for clarity. Just with the fires currently happening in the San Francisco Bay trying to find out what roads are closed, areas are blocked off, or what evacuation orders are in place for a particular area. When we look at the gulf coast and their current weather disaster, the concerns we might have in the Bay Area pale in comparison. One video that is going around from the weather channel showing how severe the storm surge is (just one aspect of the many destructive forces wielded by the storm) is nightmare inducing! And we are three thousand miles away!
In order to get the above mentioned clarity, it requires a herculean effort with potentially dozens of Federal, State and Local agencies, all requiring incredible amounts of coordination. When we see the news reports, we hear more multi letter agencies mentioned than words. NOAA, FEMA, NHC, EPA, NRT, DOT and others. And these are just the Federal agencies. When attempting coordination in a national disaster like this, you have to be prepared for anything. To say the situation is fluid is not just an unintended pun, but a reality. Hurricanes can shift direction, suddenly vary intensity up or down, stall in one area, or any number of other things. Getting alerts out to people on the ground in real time is literally a matter of life and death. As we saw in the case of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, disorganization and lack of clarity can and will make the disaster many times worse. We need to get people notified of what is going on as early as possible, we need to get disaster response crews into place ASAP, we need rescue teams moving even before people need rescuing and on top of that, when potentially millions of people are fleeing an area, we need to get critical supply convoys INTO the area. These are the modern day heroes… the people driving into the storm to deliver water or shelter.
Since Jupiter’s inception, our stock and trade has been in ensuring that those responders and emergency management people are able to make sense of the information coming at them so that they can make the right decisions, and do their best to maximize the efficiency of their response, and minimize human suffering. In emergency operation centers all over the world, people trust and rely on the power and features and the resiliency of products like the Jupiter Catalyst Processors to manage all the incoming data and present it in a way that ensures that they can make sense of it. During emergencies, you need products that can be trusted to do their job and never fail; Jupiter checks all the boxes for emergency response agencies worldwide.
Where Jupiter goes far beyond the boxes is in the addition of newer platforms like Canvas. Canvas allows any device that is connected to the network to be an extension of the big fancy wall in the secure/dry/stable operations center environment.
What this means is that the federal/state/local command structure NO MATTER WHERE they are located, can see the most up to date information that pertains to them, or ensure that the feed from a drone they are using to survey a flooded road can be seen by those back in the command center. No matter what is needed, we can ensure that everyone can see it, process it, and make the best decisions possible in that moment.
This is what Jupiter does, we know that lives are on the line when our systems are in use. And we take it more seriously than you can imagine. This is just who we are.
