A worldwide pandemic of a lethal virus, a wave of terrorist cyber attacks...it's hard to imagine a worse situation. Last month disaster responders, technologists and community leaders from more than ten countries assembled in San Diego to practice responding to this large-scale and complex disaster scenario. The week-long simulation, called Strong Angel III, was directed by Eric Rasmussen, a professor at San Diego State University; sponsors included agencies of the U.S. military, technology companies such as Microsoft, Google and Cisco, and humanitarian agencies like Save the Children.

Over the course of the week, volunteers learned a great deal about what did and didn't work as they tried to create emergency communications systems on the fly and deliver humanitarian aid. The simulation relied -- not always successfully -- on videoconferencing, GIS and other high-bandwidth applications to collect and disseminate information; in the words of one participant, the event was structured so that "failures were as instructive, if not more, as the successes."