At last weeks UK Fire Minerva Hydra User Group meeting, Professor Jonathan Crego MBE, Hydra Foundation Director, presented Station Manager Malcolm Farrow with a Lifetime Fellowship for his passion, commitment and dedication to the development of the Hydra User Group for the UK Fire Service.  

Malcolm has chaired the Hydra User Group in the Fire Service for the last 5 years and anounced he was steping down as chair.    The Hydra Foundation thanks Malcolm for his support and commitment. 

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service Hydra in the Cloud suite goes live following a 3 month design, build and commisioning phase with the Hydra Foundation.    The new Hydra in the Cloud suite, the first for the UK Fire and Rescue Service consists of state of the art technology with iPad technology intergrated into Hydra in the Cloud.   The new suite consists of 4 syndicate rooms, incident command vehicle, control room and plenary room.

A new Hydra in the Cloud, Hydra Suite is now fully operational at the British Transport Police site in Liverpool.  The Hydra Foundation has designed, built and commisioned this new suite using state of the art technology which consists of 4 syndicate rooms, control room and large plenary room with dual use training facilities. 

Red Cross and Voluntary sector and Statutory Agencies met for a 10,000 Volt conference at the Guild Hall 26th November. 150 delegates listened to presentations from very moving speakers talking about their experiences following the loss of loved ones at the Lockerbie bombing. London bombings and the Malaysia Airlines disasters of MH17 and MH370.  The delegates worked through case studies of major incident and pandemic, followed by a panel session looking at how the voluntary sector has assisted and can assist. A real privilege for the Hydra Foundation to work alongside such dedicated people.

The Hydra Foundation and FLETC team have completed the new Hydra Suite building at the training centre in Brunswick, Georgia.

A new project to build two Hydra suites for the Immigration Agency has begun. This really exciting development will enable the Home Office to develop Investigative, Leadership and Decision making scenarios in two new Hydra Suites in the North and South of England.  The Hydra Foundation was selected to work alongside the agency in the design of exercises and the creation of the simulation environment and we are hugely excited to be able to apply the Hydra methodologies in this public protection arena.

The Hydra Suite at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre starts to take shape with the first stage of the technical installation starting in July. 

53 Delegates attended a 10kv workshop on the future direction for Curriculum and Futures for the Open University.  Representatives from all disciplines, Associate Lecturers and Students attended.  The workshop was sponsored by the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Musa Mihsein and was organised by Director of Academic Planning and Resources at Open University, Dr Rachel Cragg.  The delegates discussed a wide ramge of issues driving the Future for the University 

We are really excited to announce that University of Central Lancashire have engaged with us to build a state of the art Hydra suite.  UCLAN have solid connections with the region and are a world class centre in Forensic, Criminology and Law Enforcement Studies. We look forward to building the new suite and bringing them into our vibrant community of ideas.

The 1st live Hydra exercise, Exercise Peninsula, was delivered in the Hydra Suite at Victoria Police today for Victoria Police Sergeants.   The exercise was facilitated by Vic. Police accredited Hydra Facilitators.

1st pilot exercise, Exercise Peninsula, was delivered in the Hydra Suite at Victoria Police.

Delegates from Victoria Police’s Centre of Supervision and Management, Operational Specialists, Specialist Centre of Emergency Incident Management, Centre Managers, New Zealand Police, Baw Baw Shire Council, Country Fire Authority and State Emergency Services attended. 

The exercise was particularly successful due to the attendance of Emergency Management Partners who formed a Diamond Group, dealing with the strategic management of the incident, which centred on Bush Fire Incident Command, Evacuation and Recovery. 

The exercise was facilitated by Vic. Police accredited Hydra Facilitators.

17th March, top 90 Directors and Heads participate in a 10kv workshop opened by the Deputy Director General and attended by key personnel looking at the operational work of the Agency.  The Director General and Home Secretary joined a panel to discuss the issues raised in the 10kv workshop.  The afternoon was focussed on the future of the Agency and the Home Secretary Theresa May congratulated the Agency on its progress to date.  The Final session was a question and answer discussion with the Director General and the Home Secretary.  A real privilage for the Foundation to be asked to facilitate the 10kv event.

This week we completed the installation of Hydra 6 at Essex Police.   Further details are available on the Hydra site pages

http://hydrafoundation.org/international-hydra/uk-south/essex-police

A powerful day with Prof John Grieve and Prof Jonathan Crego, taking Masters students studying Criminology through a Critical Incident workshop using 10kv to capture their decision making.  This whole day event looked at the need to recognise early the criticality of incidents and be able to record detailed rationale in the deicision long of the actions taken and their likely consequences.  The group debated the significance of both single incident and the links between them.  Ably supported by their course leaders, the debatge considered ECHR, legal and political context.

Prof. Jonathan Crego facilitated 36 Chief Superintendents and senior police staff members together with a Diamond Panel comprising A Barrister, Chief Constable, Head of Local Authority, Policing Crime Commissioner and Deputy Policing Crime Commissioner, Commercial Director, Senior Journalist and Prof Laurence Alision.  The event looked at the strategic management of critical incidents including policing partners at the Police Staff College Bramshill.  Hydra in the Cloud operated with 5 syndicates and each syndicate had the ability to operate as three sub syndicates.  The debate was challenging, deep and well received by the delegates.  The College of Policing hosted the event and it was a full on day that was filled with very serious challenge and debate.  The new system enabled deep discussion of key issues and full engagement of all the delegates.  Altogether an outstanding event.

The Hydra Foundation ran a 10,000 Volt Workshop at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre for USA Homeland Security to develop the training objectives for their pilot Hydra Exercise to be held in October 2014.  FLETC are in the process of building a Hydra suite to meet the needs of the 91 Law Enforcement Agencies they train at their Glynco centre.  In attendance were the Senior Management Team and representatives from their key stakeholders.  The training objectives were agreed and work now begins in earnest to create both their suite and the first exercise which will focus on multi agency management of Pandemic

10,000-volt methodologies formed the central data collection methodology for a prestigious Counter Terrorism Conference that ran in Los Angeles. Five countries including Australia, Canada, USA, New Zealand and the UK and 250 delegates met to discuss intelligence sharing in Counter Terrorism. Subjects covered were cyber crime, criminal investigation, family liaison and intelligence sharing. 10,000 volts computers supplied by the LAPD Hydra centre were used to capture the information. The London Hydra Team carried out overnight analysis and the results of that analysis were presented at the morning session of the conference. The real time, approach to data analysis, by using a global Hydra suite that operated whilst the conference time zone was sleeping, is a first for the Hydra Foundation and was very well received by the conference. - See more at: http://hydrafoundation.org/news-and-press/41/#sthash.W87vKQnO.dpuf