Simultaneous demonstrations of the Business Continuity Information Network (BCIN), a communication system developed by Florida International University that allows businesses and emergency managers to share important information before, during and after an emergency, will be held on Monday, May 12. The demonstrations will be run by the Miami-Dade Department of Emergency Management & Homeland Security and the Palm Beach County Division of Emergency Management and attended remotely by the Florida Executive Office of the Governor in Tallahassee and Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Other leading corporations also will participate at the respective emergency management headquarters. This will be a media-only event.

Emergency management managers and their staffs, along with company business continuity directors, managers and their staffs will interact with counterparts in each county and remotely from participating business facilities. Using realistic company and emergency management data that is entered and shared at the exercise, FIU’s prototype system will provide participants with real-time, local and accurate business-relevant information. FIU will provide technical support during the demonstration. Besides FIU, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, other key players in BCIN include IBM, Office Depot, FloridaFirst (a consortium of financial institutions), Palm Beach County’s Private-Public Partnership, and other private sector partners.

Contact Steve Luis of FIU’s School of Computing and Information Sciences at 305-348-6215 or luiss@cis.fiu.edu, Jaime Hernandez of Miami-Dade County Emergency Management at 305-468-5451 or hjaim@miamidade.gov, or Butch Truesdale of Palm Beach County Emergency Management at 561-712-6400. For more information about BCIN, visit http://www.bizrecovery.org.