Strong Angel

Since 1999 the Strong Angel series has focused on field experimentation within very challenging environments, testing cutting-edge techniques and technologies to facilitate more effective humanitarian response.

There are several specific sectors tested in each Strong Angel event, with the general goals of (1) improved information flow, (2) the provisioning of urgent and sustainable critical services, and (3) transboundary cooperation, all in the aftermath of a disaster.

Demonstrations have been held in 2000, 2004, and 2006, and the structural capability remains in 2019 within the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) at George Mason University in Washington DC, and in the STAR-TIDES network established in the aftermath of the 2006 Strong Angel event.

[1] Strong Angel Executive Committee members during past events, and their current career positions in 2019, include Gay Mathews (CEO of the North Hawaii Credit Union in Honoka'a, Big Island, Hawaii), Robert Kirkpatrick (Executive Director of the UN's Global Pulse initiative within the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations), John Crowley (Senior Manager within the Global Facility for Disaster Risk and Recovery within the World Bank in Washington DC), Suzanne Mikawa Kirkpatrick (formerly the Program Manager within the Office of the Executive at Microsoft, now with a master's degree in User-Centered Design and working in New York), Doug Hanchard (Executive Director of Rapid Response Consulting in Ottawa, Canada and London UK), Pete Griffiths (Deputy Division Chief, Future Warfare Systems Division, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency), Nigel Snoad (Director of Global Disaster Response for Google), David Warner (owner of the Taj near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan where he runs a collaborative education program for schools in Nangarhar Province near the Kyber Pass), Brian Steckler (director of the Hastily Formed Networks program within the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and Lead Architect of the Rapid Telecommunications Assessment Team (RTAT) initiative), Clare Lockhart (Senior Executive within the Institute for State Effectiveness in Washington DC), Adam Royce (faculty at San Diego State University), and Eric Frost (Professor of Geology and Director of the Visualization Laboratory at San Diego State University).

Vice-Admiral Dennis McGinn was a sponsor of the Strong Angel concept in 1999 and was named in July 2013 the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and the Environment.

[4] One of the early concepts tested within the Strong Angel Demonstration was a shipboard Civil-Military Operations Center or CMOC, designed to be as valuable to the civilian humanitarian community as to the military, despite being located on a Navy warship.

The first Strong Angel (SA-I) was held near Puu Pa'a, Waimea, on the Big Island of Hawaii in June 2000 to address problems seen in the international response to the Kosovo refugee migration.

Several reasons were proposed for the success, but credit must be given to the early support received from senior UN field staff present within the earliest planning conferences that were hosted by the US Navy.

The tools and techniques proposed for answering the tasks were selected for testing and demonstration based on several criteria, but each needed to be commercially availability for international deployment by the end of the 2006 calendar year.

However, as of 2019, the threats from climate change posed to Pacific Atoll Nations by sea-level rise, overwash events, and fresh-water shortfalls has brought the Strong Angel series design - an international disaster response demonstration - back into active discussion.

Now, however, those problems could be addressed using exponential advances in technology, epidemiology, and data visualization, and a much deeper understanding of systems science, to assess the interventions that might improve the resilience of those vulnerable communities.