(Alexandria, VA) - November 11, 2008 - Emergency managers across the country are facing the same challenges when developing their comprehensive response plans to natural and man-made disasters: Achieving ongoing participation from stakeholders, compliance with the myriad of evolving standards, and a lack of adequate resources including time and availability of qualified plan writers.

And in the face of rapidly shrinking budgets, it has become even more challenging.

Previstar's CEMPlanner is the answer..

"We wanted to provide a tool that addresses these challenges," said Joe Gordon, Previstar's VP of Marketing. "So we convened a product advisory group consisting of emergency managers from cities and counties with populations ranging from 30,000 to over a half-million. We asked them what they needed in a solution before we began product development."

The advisory group identified multiple, critical problems inherent in creating a plan. "Agencies are understaffed, under-budgeted and spread thin working on competing community priorities," Gordon continued. "Just finding the time to create a plan - and scheduling the time of stakeholders to participate in the process - is daunting."

"Then there's the ongoing task of tracking emerging federal and state standards, and the resources needed to update their plans so they remain compliant. In many cases, agencies end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to hire outside help."

CEMPlanner is designed to overcome these challenges.

Jay Bowden, CEM, Previstar's Emergency Management Specialist, assisted in the design of CEMPlanner. As the former Deputy Director of Nashville, Tennessee's Office of Emergency Management, he intimately understands what emergency managers are facing.

"Having come from a midsized EMA with a limited budget," he said, "we wanted to design a solution that would help people do more with less. At $5,000 per year, a community can use the software as a "virtual" planning expert."

Like Turbo Tax® for Emergency Planners

CEMPlanner is a web-based planning system that prompts planners and community stakeholders step-by-step through the planning processes. Planning is broken down into manageable sections that link to specific standards.

Users fill in the customizable templates; the software then takes that information and generates a document that meets style requirements, including fonts and a table of contents.

Once the process is completed, plans can be printed and submitted to regulatory agencies, and automatically "activated" into incident management systems - such as Previstar's CPS - to be implemented and managed during a response.

Himadri Banerjee, Previstar's Chief Software Architect, designed the solution as a secure web-hosted service using industry leading edge technology. "Although local installations are available, we wanted to provide a hosted option that's secure, requires no local IT support and provides significant price flexibility. Now planners from all size agencies can access the latest in innovation to assist their complex planning challenges."

Creating a Complete & Actionable CEMP

A truly standards based Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan (CEMP) encompasses a number of plans, such as an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP), Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP), Hazard Mitigation, and Continuity of Government (COG).

It is no wonder that a complete CEMP can take years to develop.

And because of the sheer complexity of the process, many plans just become simple compliance documents, satisfying regulated requirements but ultimately end up sitting on a bookshelf.

CEMPlanner changes that, creating a framework for the complete suite of plans that agencies and regulators initially intended: actionable response roadmaps that can be implemented during live incidents.

A Practitioner-Driven Solution

Previstar recognized the need for a product that radically simplified a complex and time-consuming process. The company gathered practitioners from cities and counties with populations ranging from 30,000 to over half a million, including Johnson City, MO; Yuma, AZ; East Providence, RI; Okmulgee County, OK; Medina, OH; Chester County, PA; New Orleans, LA; Groton, CT; Boston, MA; Newport News, VA; Plano, TX; and representatives from the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin who helped ensure CEMPlanner meets the challenges of planning with an easy to use system.

CEMPlanner Live Demonstration at IAEM

Previstar will demonstrate CEMPlanner November 15-20 in Kansas City, KS at the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) 56th Annual Conference & Emergency Management and Homeland Security Expo (EMEX) 2007. Previstar representatives will be available during exhibit hours at booth #316 to provide demonstrations.

About Previstar

Previstar provides a suite of highly customizable software capabilities - primarily to the emergency preparedness and response communities, the armed services, and homeland security industry - for managing the incident lifecycle, including planning for, responding to, and recovering from all hazards incidents and events.

Web-based and easy-to-use, these integrated capabilities enhance unified planning, situational awareness, strategic decision support, and enhanced tactical execution for users located horizontally and vertically across organizational boundaries.

Previstar's suite of products originated from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratories and offers the only solution for equipping all organizational roles with a mix of customizable tools for enhancing operational effectiveness and organizational alignment, both day-to-day and during live incidents.

Previstar is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia and conducts research and development activities at its facility in Knoxville, Tennessee.

For more information about Previstar, please visit our website at www.previstar.com or contact: Joe Gordon, AVP Sales & Marketing Support, joe.gordon@previstar.com, 813-244-7774.

Turbo Tax® is a trademark of Intuit, Inc.