The county designed the high-tech package for the vehicle last year. The work was completed just three weeks before the hurricane hit Louisiana, said Dave Chapman, president of Upperco, Md.-based Chapman Consultants LLC, which served as the integrator for the IP technology used in the vehicle.

Chapman discussed the vehicle's Katrina performance during a roundtable discussion on disaster preparedness at VoiceCon Spring 2006 in Orlando last week.

The IP technology in the vehicle, supplied by Arinc Inc. in Annapolis, Md., helped make 17 different radio and communications systems interoperate after the storm. The vehicle was sent to Jefferson Parish, La., to provide communications support for walk-in medical clinics, according to Chapman.

Anne Arundel County officials designed the vehicle to be a communications hub in the event that the county's emergency operations center became unavailable. The communications system was designed to be interoperable with those of any agency in Maryland, as well as with those of jurisdictions bordering the state, Chapman said.

"It operated flawlessly for more than three weeks in Louisiana, all on generator power," he said.