Challenge

The Wings Over Houston Airshow, October 29-30, 2022, is one of the top-attended annual air shows in

the United States. The event requires a robust safety and emergency response plan to address medical

emergencies, missing persons, potential security threats, and other incidents.

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Colin Rizzo, the Director of Emergency Management for the Port of Houston Authority, regularly volunteers as staff during the event. Colin describes how the Intrepid Response mobile software platform provided an invaluable comprehensive event management solution throughout all stages of the event life-cycle.

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Solution
The Wings over Houston Airshow involves dynamic planning due to variable issues such

as changing weather and aircraft availability. Intrepid Response enabled flexible pre-planning by allowing easy updates to the digital event map within seconds, marking locations of tents, aircraft, entry and exit points, medical stations, and other strategically beneficial points of interest.

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These real-time changes could be instantly shared, ensuring cross-functional teams had accurate and

instantaneous updates. To ensure smooth coordination, Intrepid Response enabled multi-jurisdictional

and multi-functional teams to seamlessly collaborate while avoiding excessive radio use, often resulting in missed and misunderstood communications. This was especially helpful for on-site medical teams.

 

With just a few minutes of training, all teams could collaborate over the platform, see each other’s

locations, securely exchange information, and share multimedia data such as photos and videos of

missing individuals.

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Intrepid Response served as the primary communication tool to address the information overload issue. Its native channel capability ensured controlled information flow throughout the incident. Private channels were also established for exchanges within law enforcement agencies, while shared channels facilitated multi-agency collaborative incident management.

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Benefit

During the airshow, one of the most notable benefits of the Intrepid Response platform was the swift

reunification of missing individuals with their families. By securely sharing photos of missing individuals via the platform, responders gained an immediate visual reference that enhanced search efforts. The platform also allowed for live mapping of searched areas and the placement of markers indicating clues.​