Florida’s Hurricane Exercise 2009 wrapped up this week, but this is the first I’ve had time to write about it. A brief intro can be found here:

http://maxmayfieldshurricaneblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/you-play-like-you-practice

So once again this year we used InMotion Global (IMG) to manage resource tracking during transit between vendors or embarkation points to a logistics staging area or point of distribution.  Our parent company also trained on providing transportation assets for use during shuttle runs and supporting ESF-8 Mass Care as mobile warehouses.

IMG is an application I wrote and architected to manage transportation from conception through transit, delivery, and accounting.  It was based on an Access program called “InMotion” and is delivered as a Software as a Service app to various clients.  InMotion Global, Inc. is also a wholly owned subsidiary of Interstate Transport, Inc. which provides software and other logistics services (though there is a potential re-org in the air, but more on that in the coming weeks).

I mention all this because this year IMG, Inc. was also responsible for responder training.  We trained the Florida National Guard on not only using IMG and our customer portal LoadLink, but also on procedures to follow in the Movement Coordination Center which we run at the state logistics response center (SLRC) in Orlando.  We hadn’t realized (though we should have) that we would be training as much as we were, but once we got there and saw how the activation was proceeding we jumped at the opportunity to take the reins.

My team and I did an excellent job with this, our third activation, and we were able to firm up some business relationships and get a better handle on how the state of Florida wants to proceed.  Hopefully we’ll be able to get additional funding for the integration of InMotion Global with the other applications that the state uses to respond to emergency events, and next week I’m going to work with one of the application vendors to nail down what it is we can integrate and which of these various applications is responsible for what part of the emergency response.  It’s good to know that the state of Florida has made a commitment to logistics, as both human and materiel logistics form the largest piece of the post-event emergency response puzzle (with search and rescue and life-saving a concurrent piece of the puzzle, not necessarily post-event).