November 2, 2023
Deputy Chief David Elzey, Oakland Police Department
Dr. Carlo Beckman and Officer David Pullen, Oakland Police Department
Subject: UASI Regional Data Sharing Project Letter
Dear NCRIC/HIDTA Partners,
The California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) has appro ved funds to implement a pilot project (Phase I) for regional data sharing through the Urban A rea Security Initiative (UASI). The primary focus of this pilot project will be on data sharing abo ut Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNE) threat detection including an ale rt and warning system, with peripheral data sharing of drug overdose fatal and non-fatal ev ents and novel illicit drug discoveries.
Phase II of the pilot project expects to be introduced in 2023 and will include additional law enforcement partner agencies throughout the Bay Area. The project partners will include your agency, dispatch/RMS managers, public health, emergency medical service s and fire agencies. The selected partners will be working with FirstWatch ( https://firstwatch.net) to develop a real-time situational awareness and threat detection tool for your agency and our trusted public safety partners.
The owners of the fire, EMS, and law enforcement data are in complete control of who or what agency is allowed to view or analyze their data. FirstWatch manages th e process for viewing privileges with direct correspondence to you and the other agencies that own th e data. Likewise, the level of detail available to partner agencies is dictated by the data owners, f or example, names, locations, dates, and times of events. The sources for the data are Computer-Aided D ispatch (CAD) and electronic patient care records (ePCR), which FirstWatch is already gathering thro ugh data sharing agreements and contracts at the local level.
The NCRIC/HIDTA plans to analyze the regional data and make inf erences between local suspicious activity reports (SARs) and local first responder actions, then share that information with affected jurisdictions for a regional approach to public safety. Data owners will receive pre-analyzed data from FirstWatch, supplying greater situational awareness of public health and public safety threats.
Based on granted permission levels, regional users may be epide miologists and mental health professionals tracking the emergence of new drugs and connect frequent users of the 911 system with active interventions. A better data-sharing relationship will exist between fire, law enforcement, public health, crime labs, coroner/medical examiners, and mental health agencies.
The NCRIC/HIDTA effectively uses the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), supplying geospatial data to track the frequency and s everity of drug overdoses in our region. Overdose data collected by FirstWatch will feed direct ly into ODMAP to provide near real- time data relative to fatal and non-fatal overdoses. The data p oints used by ODMAP are date, time, location, drug type, fatal/non-fatal data, and Narcan administration. Personal identifying information
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is removed in the data collection and is not transmitted to ODM AP. Locations of the event are generalized to prevent identific ation. Access to ODMAP is cont rolled and reserved for those on a need-to-know basis. The benefits of taking part in this information sharing tool will be realized by all participating County and City stakeholders, they include:
• Increased situational awareness of the time and location of po tential or actual drug overdoses, fatal and non-fatal
• Alert and Warning system: Ability to provide public health and safety stakeholders with immediate notification of spikes in fatal or non-fatal overdoses • Improve data-driven decisions through the analysis of overdose frequency and Narcan administration
• Analysis of ODMAP data that supplies context to overdose response strategies' effectiveness • Encourage cooperative partnership between public health and safety sectors
FirstWatch initiated this pilot project in March with introduct ory meetings with each data owner and related disciplines and partners. The next step in this process requires that FirstWatch secure approval from the data owners to share the data points with the project partners. FirstWatch has created a data- sharing agreement which allows for the regional use of the data to make this project successful. The data-sharing agreements are being circulated now and will need your immediate attention.
This regional data sharing pilot project is funded for three ye ars. Future sustainment funding availability may be based on the success of the pilot project. The grant performance period requires deployment before December 20, 2023.
I hope that you and your agency ca n participate in this project to help us save lives across our region through early threat detection. As always, if you have questions, please reach out to me at (415) 725- 1000.
Sincerely,
Mike L. Sena
Executive Director
Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Northern California Regional Intelligence Center