An Autumn Day with RC's Digital Stewards on Governors Island

“We seem to have lost him somewhere in the pumpkin patch,” Digital Steward Derrice Wright jokes, and looks across the field spreading out in front of him and his team.

It is a Sunday in late October and 23 participants from our project Resilient Networks NYC - enabled by the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s RISE program - have gathered here on Governors Island. The Far Rockaways, Hunts Point, Sheepshead Bay, Gowanus, and East Harlem are all represented this day, right here in the middle of New York harbor. Despite biting temperatures and an insistent wind blowing across the island, we are here to test, train and deploy our skills as well as our networking equipment.

The temporarily lost team member is part of a group of Digital Stewards that have taken on the task to test the range of an omni-directional mesh antenna. The antenna forms part of their Portable Network Kit (PNK) - a mobile kit that can serve as a pop-up wireless network. Used for training as well as a tool for independent emergency communication, we have brought a total of six PNKs to work with on the island today - one from each neighborhood as well as the Resilient Communities team. This particular team of Stewards that have taken to experiments across the fields is surprised to find how far away it is still possible to connect and upload content onto their local server. Later on, once back in the Far Rockaways, Derrice Wright reports back on the team’s work.

“After the PNK was fired up, we had three different devices walk in three different directions to test the range,” he writes in an email. “For the exercise, I had everyone walk about 30 yards in their direction to try and send a picture message in the server chat. The devices didn't see weak signal until about 150 yards out and only one device lost connection before the 150 yard mark because it went over a hill at about 85 yards and lost its line of sight.”

As the newest team member with the Resilient Communities initiative, I have a lot to learn from these Digital Stewards, who have been with the program for the past two years. Two stewards from project partner Silicon Harlem tell me what these findings regarding equipment range mean in terms of the actual reach of an antenna in their neighborhood. They break the yardage information that they just collected into street blocks, and show me on a map what this means for their in East Harlem neighborhood. But then, of course, one of them tells me, the range won’t be this good in their neighborhood. Trees, buildings, cars and all the other obstacles to line of sight will make their job of providing connectivity to their community much more challenging.

The drills of this day take place at a time when Resilient Networks NYC is moving into its installation phase. In Gowanus, the Far Rockaways and Hunt’s Point the rooftops of the small businesses that host the networks have all been inspected. Mesh networks have been designed, and stewards have been trained in the safe use of tools and ladders. Equipment has been procured, inventoried and configured. Across the boroughs, teams are ready for installations.

And so, this day is about a broader focus on resilience. We focus on the skills, information, and troubleshooting needed to deploy the PNK’s as independent emergency networks in the event that all other means of communication fail. With the recent anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, such a scenario is not difficult to imagine.

Having found lunch among the few food trucks that still make it out to Governors Island in late October, the five neighborhoods represented this day regroup. What do the lessons from the tests we performed tell us about deploying PNKs as an independent emergency network, Raul Enriquez - head of tech and training within the Resilient Communities team and taco enthusiast - asks us all. What areas do you want to make sure to cover in your neighborhood? What limitations or obstacles do you need to work around in order to deploy this kind of resilient network? Teams take to mapping the pieces of the ad hoc networks that in an emergency situation can enable crucial communication and coordination of resources in their neighborhoods.

"We know what areas we need to cover, we know our neighborhood” Gowanus Community Coordinator Amir Elivert tells me. "But it’s good to demystify the technology in this way - to find out how we can actually use it in an emergency," he points out.

As a grand finale for the day, we try a real deployment - making one large network from the otherwise independent PNKs. Having configured all neighborhood PNKs to work as access points for one central host PNK, teams spread out among the trees and abandoned porches of Governors Island. The island is also known for its notoriously bad cell service, and as teams disperse the local server that we are all connected to is suddenly our only means of communication.

“No wonder you brought us out here to test emergency communication” one of the Digital Stewards tell me, waving his phone in the air to find any signal but the one we have generated ourselves. After some confusion and lessons learned regarding coordination; we all convene to talk in the Hackchat application - hosted on the local server - to continue our exercises. Having established stable connections it’s time for a new challenge.

“Ok team! Please move your gear farther out,” Raul Enriquez types in the chat. The Far Rockaway crew move further down the lane on which they are set up. Team Hunts Point experiment with bringing their access point around the corner of a building. Working together, Sheepshead Bay and East Harlem Stewards venture up on a hill, beyond a cluster of trees. “I have connection through the trees” one of their team members confirm in the chat. Everyone is cold, but communicating through the independent network that we have set up, and tested to its limits.

And so it is finally time to wrap up for the day and head back to the ferry. It’s been chilly, but instructive. We look forward to future drills across the neighborhoods, and thank all of you who made it out this day for your engagement, your input and your hard work.