The shared border between the United States and Canada spans nearly 4,000 miles (over 5,500 miles if you include Alaska), making it the longest international border in the world. Along this border are thousands of small towns and cities which form cross-border communities, despite being divided by a geopolitical boundary. Across the border travel over 30 million vehicles annually over 100 border control points, including daily commuters, commercial traffic and, when emergencies call for it, first responders. 

It is these border communities that the Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resilience Experiment (or CAUSE) was designed to support. The CAUSE experiments support of the 2011 Beyond the Border Action Plan signed by then President Obama and Prime Minister Harper.  CAUSE is a series of experiments that test and evaluate technologies and processes that enable cross-border information sharing.

In an effort to make communities along the border safer and more resilient to disasters, the CAUSE experiments have covered topics including: coordination of local, state, provincial and national incident management and alerting systems across border; public safety broadband and deployable LTE; cross border request and acquisition of mutual aid; and using social media to enhance decision making in emergency management.

G&H is proud to have supported DHS S&T in conducting the CAUSE series since 2013. The fifth and final iteration of this experiment, CAUSE V, took place in November 2017 in northwest Washington and adjacent mainland British Columbia.

 

Read the After Action Report here.
Learn more with the CAUSE V Story Map hosted by the National Information Sharing Consortium here.