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  4. Winter 2005, Vol. 2, Issue 4

Winter 2005, Vol. 2, Issue 4

RAMSAFE helps New Orleans find order and hope

The 2005 hurricane season pounded New Orleans, but a Y-12-developed technology, RAMSAFE, is helping the city recover. Click image for larger view.

The 2005 hurricane season pounded New Orleans, but a Y-12-developed technology, RAMSAFE, is helping the city recover. Click image for larger view.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Unisys Corp., a strategic partner of Y‑12 licensee RAMSAFE Technologies Inc., began helping New Orleans reassemble the city's common infrastructure. To meet the overwhelming 24/7 data demands, Unisys and city officials selected RAMSAFE emergency‑management software.

Y‑12 developed RAMSAFE for the U.S. Army in 1999 as a Work‑for‑Others program collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee Research Corporation and MCH Inc. Y‑12 copyrighted and registered the software and made it available for licensing under DOE's Technology Transfer program. Negotiations were then completed between DOE and Howard Gordon, RAMSAFE Technologies chairman.

Himadri Banerjee, RAMSAFE vice president and chief software architect and one of the software's original designers, said the main focus is on obtaining funding from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. RAMSAFE is expediting the process by generating well‑organized, FEMA‑required project worksheets that catalog the destruction, materials needed, labor costs and money spent. Every paycheck, every receipt is recorded for audit purposes.

Field personnel provide data that RAMSAFE users compile into a daily assessment roll‑up for the mayor's office, accompanied by a Geographic Information Systems map, all fed by a satellite communication system. The daily assessment provides the number of city returnees, the number of occupied buildings and other statistics.

The city is very satisfied with RAMSAFE's performance, Banerjee reported. He has found that using the software to help recovery has been an extraordinary learning experience. “It's giving us new ideas about working on large‑scale disasters,” Banerjee said. He has worked with a RAMSAFE team in New Orleans since September.

Part of Unisys' homeland‑security‑response offerings, RAMSAFE is marketed to emergency workers at all levels of government. The Canadian government, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's United Space Alliance and numerous others are considering it for large‑scale use.

Economic impacts from Y‑12's licensing of RAMSAFE include

— a new 8,000‑square‑foot technology center near Oak Ridge, representing a 6,000‑square‑foot expansion;

— more than $7 million in investment;

— more than $1.4 million in revenue through 2004; and

— a payroll of 22 full‑time employees and four consultants.

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