Common Cyber Situational Awareness: An Important Part of Modern Public Protection and Disaster Relief

Abstract

European Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) services such as law enforcement, firefighting, emergency medical and disaster recovery services have recognized that the lack of interoperability of technical systems limit the cooperation between authorities. Also Finnish PPDR authorities and politicians have recognized the importance of a common situational awareness in preparation for the future. When the purpose is to work effectively towards a common goal or solve various challenges, accurate and reliable information as a basis for situational awareness is needed. Cyber situational awareness is the part of situational awareness which concerns the “cyber” environment. Such situational awareness can be reached, e.g., by the use of data from IT sensors that can be fed to a data fusion process or be interpreted directly by the decision-maker. This study was conducted on the ground by visiting situation and command centers located in the Turku area in Southwestern Finland. The Southwestern Finland Police department, the Southwest Finland Emergency Services, the Hospital District of Southwest Finland and the Finnish Border Guard in Turku have their own situation/ command centers. The main purpose of the study was to find out local level factors which affect to utilization of situational awareness system. The aim was also to research the level of preparedness in regional administration including local PPDR departments. The main results can be summarized so that the operational field work of the PPDR authorities should be more standardized so that implementing new technology would be profitable. The lack of cooperation between situation centers prevent to create common situational awareness. In the future, cyber situational awareness can play an important role in emergency and crisis management because the scene of PPDR will increasingly often be a cyber-physical system.