NC4, a global leader in Situational Readiness and Global Risk Management solutions, provides superior preparedness to both private and public sector clients with its External Situational Awareness (ESA) offering. NC4’s ESA offering notifies clients of all-hazards events that may impact business operations. NC4’s travel risk management offering ActivTravel combines intelligence on global all-hazards incidents with detailed employee travel data, to heighten an organization’s overall situational awareness and readiness to respond to risks.
Drawing on its partnerships with government and law enforcement agencies, NC4’s Incident Monitoring Centers (NIMCs) track global events 24x7 – providing early, real-time incident information and alerts. Personalized ESA alerts are delivered based on key variables specified by the user, including incident severity, incident type, and distance from an organization’s key locations. The ESA service includes incidents such as transportation, severe weather, hazmat, law enforcement, fire, terrorism, and other incidents that may impact life and safety, physical assets, and continuity of operations.
NC4 is committed to assisting customers enhance Situational Readiness and travel risk management by enabling them to be more aware of events surrounding their facilities and traveling employees. Ultimately, Situational Readiness is about risk mitigation, protecting organizational assets and managing business operations. NC4’s ESA offering enhances readiness at some of the world’s largest public and private sectors organizations.
ESA customers are in a wide range of business sectors and include:
- 6 of the Top 10 Financial Firms
- 4 of the Top 7 Aerospace & Defense Contractors
- 12 Federal Government Agencies
- 20 Top Software and Technology vendors
- 3 of the top 5 Pharmaceutical companies
Topics:
Technology Overview
Information Sources
Relevancy
ActivWeather
Global Coverage
Reporting
Special Events Coverage
Technology Overview
NC4 combines sophisticated methodology, advanced technology and a staff of highly trained analysts into two physical NIMCs, one on each coast of the United States. The NIMCs are fully redundant in terms of reporting capabilities and technology, with their servers hosted outside of each NIMC in multiple, secure data centers.
Methodology:
- Captures information from thousands of diverse sources
- Continually adds to incident source inventory
- Rapidly filters thousands of incidents per day for relevancy
Technology:
- Automated, proprietary technology proactively scans numerous sources for relevant incident information
- Provides analysts with effective tools and far-reaching means for monitoring incidents
- Utilizes advanced mapping and geospatial applications
Highly Skilled Analysts:
- Extensively trained
- Multi-lingual
- College educated in related fields
- Strong technical knowledge and computer skills
Top of page
Information Sources
The NIMCs monitor literally thousands of incident information sources every minute of every day. These include:
Official Government Agency Sources
Country, state, regional and local emergency
dispatch sources across the globe- Real-time audio streaming for radio
scanner sites for PD/FD/EMS
- Regional/local transportation information
operated by DOTs
- Real-time traffic cams and other Web cams
- Federal, state and local agency sites
- Foreign government sites, from the national to the local level
Private Incident Information Sources
- Police/Fire/EMS monitoring alert networks
Local and National Media sources, both Domestic and Global
- Local network TV affiliate Web sites
- All news radio Web sites with live audio streaming
- Local newspaper Web sites
- Private media traffic information sites
More than 60% of the domestic notifications and more than 40% of the initial global incident notifications originate from government or private sources (non-media). Media sources are predominantly reviewed for follow-up.
NIMC statistics are available for your review.
Top of page
Relevancy
Our customers are alerted only to incidents that are relevant to their operations. By registering their facilities with the NC4 Incident Monitoring Centers, establishing a perimeter around each facility and profiling incident severity and types with NC4, our customers only receive incident alerts that are relevant specifically to them.
Let us provide you with an analysis of incidents which may be of interest to your organization. Simply complete the online Location Report Request form to request a customized report highlighting incidents that have occurred around your locations of interest.
ESA Situational Awareness Personalized Alerting Capabilities
Click here to see how relevant alerting works.
NC4’s ESA manages an impressive volume of incidents and notifications on a regular basis:
- Over400,000 Notifications sent per month
- Over 50,000 Unique facility-based profiles registered with NC4
- In 2008, NIMC Analysts tracked in excess of 27,000 unique incidents worldwide including:
8661 Roadway Closures
3510 3-Alarm Fires
2706 Natural Gas Leaks
1446 Suspicious Packages
1505 Avian Influenza incidents
156 Hurricanes/Cyclones
2 Hot air balloon crashes
As incidents mature, they continue to be tracked by our analysts and updated information is sent to our customers until the incident is formally closed.
Top of page
ActivWeather
ActivWeather, the meteorological reporting tool for ESA, integrates real-time weather data to provide detailed, customized, and comprehensive alerts that further enhance situational awareness.
ActivWeather content is made possible through a partnership with WeatherBug®, the leading provider of live, local weather information services. WeatherBug manages and operates a proprietary network of more than 8,000 weather stations and 2,000 cameras located throughout the U.S. and parts of Canada. These professional-grade weather stations record 27 different weather variables updated every two seconds to generate accurate and timely neighborhood-level reports that are unmatched by any other weather provider.
ActivWeather utilizes ESA’s powerful profiling system, enabling users to create weather profiles that tailor the ActivWeather alerts they receive to their locations and preferences. Only weather information that matches the profile will trigger an alert to be sent. Weather alerts are catagorized by flash floods, dust storms, severe thunderstorm warnings, tropical storm warnings and more.
Click here to see how ActivWeather works.
The combination of NC4 and WeatherBug technologies provides a powerful capability that helps to enhance situational awareness.
Download brochure
Top of page
Global Coverage
The same methodology, technology and highly skilled analysts who provide incident monitoring and alerting across the United States is applied to our global service. NC4 monitors incident information from a variety of sources, including:
- Powerful Reuters wirefeed and real-time data consoles
- Embassy Sources
- Local and national government-run websites in various nations
- Major international news services, primarily Reuter's wire service
- Hundreds of country-specific news services in both English and local languages
- Local television networks such as Al Jazeera, RAI International (Italy), Deutsche Welle (Germany), and many others
With the addition of TranSecur, the nation’s oldest continually operated provider of global security intelligence, NC4 is able to provide comprehensive global intelligence solutions. TranSecur’s Country Risk Ratings map is displayed within ESA, providing members a quick visual reference of each country’s risk status. TranSecur’s detailed summary of the international climate, which is available as an add-on component to ESA, is an excellent complement to NC4’s global incident reporting capabilities, giving members the most complete global coverage of risk and incident reporting available.
Top of page
Reporting
ESA Incident Summary Reports are comprised of six periodic reports that come
standard with an ESA subscription. The Incident Summary Reports are available at
the end of each period and contain the incident data triggered by your user alert
profiles. Incident Summary Reports organize your incident data by attributes such
as registered facility, severity level and incident type. The reports are a valuable
enhancement to your executive summaries, budget justifications, facility
evaluations and periodic reviews.
NC4’s Historical Reporting and Analysis (HRA) Pack is an add-on report generation
and incident analysis tool. HRA Pack complements and expands on the utility of
the ESA Incident Summary Reports by giving users a flexible reporting tool to
query the entire ESA incident database, not just the incidents of the alerts you
received. Incident data can be filtered and sorted in order to present information
in the most meaningful way. The HRA interface is easy to use, requiring no prior
training. Users are guided step-by-step through the report application, producing
very useful reports in any of the many file formats supported. Extracting precisely
the information of interest out of the incident database, sorting it, and presenting
it in a relevant way is a powerful tool for facility planning, incident impact
assessments and other analytical tasks.
Top of page
Special Events Coverage
In additional to daily Incident Monitoring, NC4 covers Special Event Programs for planned events such as major sports events and political conventions to unplanned events like labor strikes, protests, hurricanes and pandemic outbreaks.
Since inception, NC4 has provided members with special coverage of pandemic outbreaks including daily alerting and comprehensive briefs. NC4 has been monitoring Swine Influenza (H1N1) since April 2009, providing situational awareness with daily alerting through the ESA service and with the H1N1 Readiness Report which is distributed three times a week.
If you would like to receive a 2-week complimentary trial of the H1N1 Readiness Report, click here.
H1N1 weekly brief sample
Top of page
Genzyme - Security as an Integral Part of an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Program
The last decade has seen a shift in the security arena, from a traditional focus on physical security operations towards a focus on the fusion between physical and IT security. The security team at Genzyme has been at the forefront of this shift towards a holistic, business-based approach to security and risk management.
Download case study
Ferguson Enterprises - Protecting the ABCs with ESA
Protecting so many employees and assets throughout such a vast geographic region is a challenge that rests upon the corporate security and emergency operations team for Ferguson Enterprises. The team’s task is straightforward: protect the ABCs – associates, businesses and customers.
Download case study
Historic Portland, Maine Combines Comprehensive Situational Awareness and
Emergency Management Tools in a Post-9/11 World
The largest metropolitan area in the state of Maine, the City of Portland hosts more than 3.5 million tourists each year, and Portland’s Office of Emergency Management is responsible for the safety and well-being of each and every person that lives in, works in, or visits the area. Portland implemented NC4’s E Team crisis management software and External Situational Awareness (ESA) solution for providing the common operational picture and real-time incident overview the city requires.
Download case study
ChicagoFIRST and NC4 Protect Key Financial Institutions With Real-Time Situational Awareness
In July 2003, Chicago's premier financial services institutions formed an organization called ChicagoFirst. Members include such giants as the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Stock Exchange, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Allstate and Washington Mutual.
These powerhouses provide vital public services, so they need reliable, fast, timely information on impending or unfolding emergencies as part of their security and business continuity operations. That’s why ChicagoFirst turned to NC4, the nation’s pre-eminent source for real-time situational awareness. The result was a relationship giving ChicagoFirst members access to NC4’s unparalleled incident monitoring service.
Download case study
Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency: Real-time Situational Awareness
NC4's relationship with each of its customers is unique, and nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Massachusetts, where the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) has been using NC4's External Situational Awareness tool for more than a year.
What's unusual in this case is that MEMA is not just pulling information down from NC4; they're pushing information up to NC4 as well.
Download case study
New Jersey Office of Emergency Management: Order in the Midst of Chaos
The state emergency management team in New Jersey had tried incident management systems before, including one they put together themselves. But none of the systems gave them what they needed. Either the systems did not provide the collaborative utility to share information effectively, or there was no structure to where the information was stored.
Download case study
NC4 highlights incidents from over 1000 reported each month. These featured incidents demonstrate NC4 coverage and timeliness. NC4's prompt reporting of all-hazards incidents was recently exemplified in our reporting on the August 8, 2009 small fixed-wing airplane collision with a New York sightseeing helicopter that killed nine of the passengers. At 11:49 am EDT, the plane’s pilot was cleared for takeoff at Teterboro Airport. The last radar contact with the plane was at 11:53 am when controllers at Teterboro transferred tracking to controllers at Newark. Approximately three minutes later, the plane and helicopter collided. NC4 documented this incident as "unconfirmed" at 12:02 pm, just six minutes after the collision. Within 15 minutes, NC4 had confirmed the incident and issued five additional updates within an hour.
Attempted Car Bombing - Times Square
At approximately 6:28pm (EDT) on May 1, 2010, emergency crews discovered a potentially lethal car bomb before it could be detonated in the middle of Times Square in New York, New York.
Moscow Metro Bombings
On March 29, two coordinated suicide bombing attacks occurred at separate stations on the Moscow Metro.
United Arab Emirates Plane Crash
On October 21st, 2009 a Sudanese Boeing 707 crashed near Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates.
Bryan Chemical Fire
At approximately 12:06pm (CST) on July 30th, 2009 a large warehouse fire erupted at the El Dorado Chemical Company located on State Highway 21 in Bryan, TX.
India Hostage Situation
On April 22nd, 2009, at approximately 7:30 am IST, a group of roughly 200 Maoist rebels hijacked a Mughalsarai-bound train of the Dhanbad Eastern Central Railway division in the state of Jharkhand.
Buffalo Plane Crash
Forty-nine people were killed when a commuter flight crashed into a neighborhood in Clarence Center, NY just after 10:00pm (local time) on February 12th, igniting a fire visible from miles away.
Mumbai Terror Attacks
On November 26th, 2008, a team of ten heavily armed and professionally trained men arrived in Mumbai, India from Karachi, Pakistan.
Mexico City Plane Crash
At approximately 6:45 pm (CST) on November 4th, 2008, a Learjet-45 aircraft owned by Mexico’s Interior Ministry crashed into rush-hour traffic in Mexico City’s busy Las Lomas financial district.
Pakistan Bombing
On 20 September 2008 at approximately 8:00 pm local time (GMT +5), a large vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated in front of the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike became the ninth storm of the 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season and the second storm to reach a Category 4 status.
Tennessee Tanker Truck Accident
At approximately 2:35 pm (CDT) on July 12, 2008, a tanker truck hauling 3,200 gallons of titanium tetrachloride overturned and caught fire forcing the Tennessee Department of Transportation to shut down a 10-mile stretch of I-40 for two days in Crab Orchard, TN.
Radiation Alert in Slovenia
At 09:38 EDT on 4 June, 2008, the European Union received information that officials in Slovenia were following safety procedures to shut down the Krsko nuclear plant due to a loss of coolant in the plant's primary cooling system.
Lafayette Train Derailment
On May 17th, 2008 near Lafayette, Louisiana six cars of a commercial train derailed and began leaking hydrochloric acid, a highly toxic chemical.
Sichuan Earthquake
On May 12th, at 14:28 local time (02:28 EDT), an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 struck China’s Sichuan province.
China Train Accident
On the morning of April 28, two passenger trains collided near the city of Zibo in Shandong province, killing 72 people and injuring 416 others.
Washington DC 5-Alarm Fire
On March 12th, 2008, firefighters responded to a two-alarm fire in a five-story apartment building in northwest Washington D.C. Embers from the structure fire sparked a second fire in a nearby church, forcing firefighters to call a five-alarm response.
Times Square Recruiting Station Bombing
At approximately 3:45am (EST) on March 6, 2008 an unidentified person detonated a low-order explosive device at an armed forces recruitment station in New York City’s Times Square.
Mexico City Bombings and Threats
In mid-February of 2008, an unspecified drug cartel attempted to assassinate the Director of the Public Security Ministry (SSPDF) in Mexico City.
I-4 Seventy Vehicle Pileup
A thick fog combined with smoke from a 500-acre brush fire sparked a seventy vehicle pile-up along Florida’s I-4 near the city of Davenport on January 9th, 2008.
Royal Marsden Hospital Fire
At 08:47 EST of 2 January 2008, NC4 received breaking news from private subscription sources about a 1-alarm fire at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
Benazir Bhutto Assassination
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by two unidentified assailants following a rally for the Pakistan Peoples Party in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Omaha Mall Shooting
On December 5th, 2007, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle entered the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska and opened fire into a crowd of shoppers in the Von Maur department store.
ARCHIVED FEATURED INCIDENTS
The ESA solution provides compelling benefits:
- Enhances your Situational Awareness, enabling rapid, effective, efficient response to incidents which could cause business disruption or impact employee health and safety.
- Quickly learn about relevant risks to your facilities and your operations
- Ensure that your staff responsible for your facilities learns about problems quickly
- Reduce business impact of daily incidents and crises
- Maximize awareness of supply chain interruptions
- Avoid costly outages to critical business functions
- Reduce damage to facilities
- Lowers labor cost of risk mitigation
- Quick, cost effective, secure implementation
- Up and running in less than 30 days
- No IT infrastructure investment
- No IT labor require
