SYSTEMS

Sun Microsystems announced a collaborative agreement with the Hawaii-based Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) to fully develop and deploy Disaster Warning Systems for countries around the globe. This alliance is designed to help augment national disaster management capabilities and help protect lives and property. The Pacific Disaster Center provides disaster-related applied information research and analysis to policy makers and emergency managers. Sun is supporting this collaboration through its Global Government Industry Team. Sun is providing the PDC with technologies and engineering services required to support PDC's vision of fostering disaster-resistant communities through information, science, and technology. Currently, Sun and the PDC are assisting Thailand's National Disaster Warning Center (NDWC) to help develop its disaster early warning capabilities, a project funded by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. The systems run on the Solaris Operating System and SPARC based-servers for their reliability, speed and low total cost of ownership. "Sun's previous experience working with the Pacific Disaster Center makes us a perfect partner," said Clark Masters, EVP of Industries. "The PDC already uses Sun technologies to assess risks to populated areas and deliver multi-hazard information products to the emergency managers. With this agreement, Sun has made the transition from a server company to a provider of technology to enhance critical components at every architecture and deployment level of these systems." "This collaboration is truly a resource to help nations build capacities that protect the lives and property of their citizens," said PDC's Chief Operating Officer Ray Shirkhodai. "Through our past work with Sun, the PDC has developed a base architecture and integrated applications that can be leveraged to support this important endeavor." "We are engaged in a number of other countries in the region as well, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Korea and others," said Masters. "Following the tsunami in South Asia, governments around the world immediately realized the critical need to assess risks posed by natural disasters and create technology to mitigate these risks."