Operation Dragon Fire (ODF)

Project Name: Operation Dragon Fire (ODF)

Project Status: Proposed

Point of Contact: Allison Harrington

Center: Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response

Keywords: Data overload, aggregation, information sharing

Project Description: Operation Dragon Fire (ODF) bridges the gap between data overload and discerning meaningful and actionable information from the data. As a clearinghouse or data marketplace, ODF will provide a means to identify, aggregate, and analyze data from traditional, businesses and private sector, and social media data sources. With ODF, participating entities, including government at all levels, non-profits, response organizations, first responders, private sector industry, corporations, technology platforms, and the public can make faster, smarter decisions, with information provided by a preferred and trusted source.

Results
ODF strives to create an environment where unified, timely, and reliable information is available before, during, and after emergencies. ODF will serve as a data conduit, connecting the public and private sectors, to encourage information sharing, coordination, and collaboration across the response community. Simply put, Operation Dragon Fire will save lives by placing the right resources in the right hands, at the right place, at the right time.

Project Design Approach
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has entered into a cooperative agreement with National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (NVOAD) to initiate ODF design through collaboration with impacted stakeholders, including social media companies and businesses. A Steering Committee representative of the stakeholder community has been convened with representation from prominent and luminary thought leaders. Additionally, three work groups have been empanelled that represent the whole of community impacted by this challenge (e.g. private sector, public sector, community and faith-based organizations, emergency management, academia, etc.). These workgroups consist of a Governance Workgroup, Technical & Functional Considerations Workgroup, and Partnership Engagement Workgroup. The Steering Committee and all Workgroups met in June 2014 to establish the project vision and objectives, design the project charter with guiding principles, establish a deliverables schedule with timeline, and begin working on the ODF conceptual design.

In June 2015, the ODF concept has the opportunity to be tested during an exercise in conjunction with a large scale city partner. The exercise is designed to examine and explore a number of aspects related to the ODF project including partnership abilities, technological capabilities, and improved decision making skills. Some concepts to be examined during this exercise are:

Partnership Abilities

• Evaluate the ability to identify, establish, and create meaningful public-private partnerships with non-traditional data owners (social media) and reach agreement to share data for purpose of the response
• Showcase the interconnected sequencing of response decisions and activities across the participating stakeholder organizations

Technological Capabilities

• Demonstrate the ability to aggregate social media and other non-traditional sources of data
• Demonstrate the capability to integrate and blend traditional data with non-traditional data
• Exhibit the ability and competency to visualize and use data in a meaningful way for each participating stakeholder organization

Enhanced Decision Making
Establish improved and coordinated logistical response planning across the integrated response system before and after emergency event.
Ultimately, this exercise will prove whether ODF will help responders demonstrate better decisions by including non-traditional data while making decisions.

For more information about this project, please contact the CHIIC at chiic@cdc.gov or Brian Lee at brian.lee@cdc.hhs.gov.