TRAINING & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

2009 IFLOWS Workshop, November 9-10

This years IFLOWS workshop was hosted by the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs at Jenny Wiley State Park, Kentucky. Turnout for the workshop was good, with a strong presence from the emergency management community from across the state of Kentucky as well as IFLOWS participants from other states in the IFLOWS region. The welcome was given by Major General Edward Tonini of the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs. The agenda included a brief history of the IFLOWS system, followed by case studies of events that occurred in Kentucky. IFLOWS hardware vendors provided updates on their hardware offerings. The NWS provided an overview of the FCC Licensing process. An update on the NHWC-sponsored ALERT2 initial implementations and protocol progress was provided, followed by several ALERT/IFLOWS software and website demonstrations.

The highlights of this years workshop was seeing a demonstration of the updated NWS AFWS.net website for displaying IFLOWS region rainfall. The replacement website for the IFLOWS system has been a long time coming, and provided a glimpse of what it will look like when the whole IFLOWS region is upgraded and operating through it.