WebEOC Blog up and running

Even after two and a half years in NZ I am still not used to a long break at Christmas so it is nice to be back in the office with most people still away for a week or two and able to get some outstanding work done.

One of these pieces of work was the creation of a blog to update the health emergency management community around changes to WebEOC and Emergeo. Boards and links on the control panel are always being refined following user comments in exercises or real incidents and many of these changes are small or subtle refinements that do not necessarily warrant posting to the Emergency Management part of the Ministry of Health website.

Blogging is also an ideal means of contacting the thousands of potential users across the sector. Why thousands? Well there are over 900 generic CIMS (Coordinated Incident Management System) based positions across nearly 60 agencies and I know many emergency managers have 3 or 4 people trained for each role,

It's also a bit more informal and an opportunity to keep anyone interested up to date with the more routine work in progress on the system.

In order to provide some initial content I have added some of the most recent changes and events over the last 6 months.

Control panel condensed down

The control panel has been simplified by grouping common functions such as the Epidemiological Intelligence Reports and SitReps into menu items.

Don't forget that depending on the user position that you have logged in as you may have different access permissions. For example an Incident Controller will be able to review and publish an entire sitrep but an Operations Manager will only have access to draft the Operations part of a Sitrep.

New board created to track Weblinks

A new board called ‘Weblinks’ has been added to all users control panel. This allows Incident Controllers, EOC Managers and EOC assistants to add or edit any weblink, while other users in that agency may click and go to the website. The board can also be used to provide links to internal intranet sites.

This board will allow those designated users to add or remove weblinks on the fly during an incident without having to contact an administrator - less work for me and a quicker update for the end user.

This board is incident independent - which means that any link added in one incident will be visible in any other incident your agency is logged into.

Control panel to be re-structured

At the EMIS reference group it was agreed that the number of current boards and boards under development require a revision of their naming to keep better track of what is visible to end users. Accordingly, boards are being re-numbered and grouped into functional areas. This means that users will have a selection of boards that reflect their role - resulting in an incomplete sequence (i.e. boards 1,2,3,5,7,8,15,16). A list of the re-numbered boards will shortly be made available.

Satellite broadband options

Martin Davis and I, together with Murray Halbert, the Emergency Management Manager from Hutt Valley DHB, caught up with the team at Hutt Valley Emergency Management Office to view what they have put in place with IP-Star satellite broadband.

Now ideally every EOC would run a local version of their emergency management software meaning that even if all communication links are severed the system is still available locally within the EOC. Of course the downside of this is that you would not be able to share that information with anybody outside of the EOC.

Consequently we are exploring options to get local health EOCs back on the net as quickly as possible after a severe disaster.

There are a number of options out there for emergency managers to think about from digital radio to BGAN but none of these are currently live in New Zealand- we were keen to see IP-Star in action (as it is one of the current options available).

IP star is a geo-stationery system and consists of a satellite dish about the same size as a Sky Dish, and a modem to plug into it. You also need to think about additional wireless routers or hubs and a power supply, especially if it is a portable solution.

HVEMO have made a number of refinements to their set-up over the last year or so, especially their deployable kit following its use in a number of land Search and Rescue and Rural Fire incidents. They have two dishes; one roof mounted above their EOC and the other palletised in a waterproof case. The size of the dish and stand (about 0.8m) makes it fairly bulky but the portable kit is certainly deployable by vehicle and can be carried into final position. The various components could also be broken down and 'man-packed' if required.

The kit contains everything they need to set up a remote EOC or Incident Control Point and connect it to the internet. A small portable printer, power supply and inverter, Wireless modems and a dedicated Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) handset suitable for big fingers complete the set-up.

The March 2008 MCDEM E-Bulletin contains further details http://www.civildefence.govt.nz/memwebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/For-the-CDEM-Sector-E-Bulletin-E-bulletin-March08?OpenDocument

I tested WebEOC over the connection and despite the latency (about 900ms - the delay for the signal to reach the satellite and return) once a page had loaded and any java script been cached it was perfectly usable.

During a disaster multiple connectivity options are the key and I doubt there is one ideal solution. I have seen command posts running on a range of systems - the key is to have the capability in place and exercised it before hand. I am looking forward to getting my hands on a BGAN set for a play when it goes live shortly.

Board Builders Boot Camp

A two day administrator’s course and board building session was held on 9 and 10 December and was attended by a number of emergency managers, web developers and public health specialists.The course was extremely successful with a number of boards built in development, and a number of local and national business as usual systems identified as being suitable for an API.

Boards that were built included a personnel and task tracking board for Public Health investigations, status reporting and facilities status boards for DHBs and enhancements to the Ambulance EOC status board and resource tracking. These boards will be further developed and move into production shortly.

Another Board Builders Boot Camp will be run towards the middle of 2009.

North Island CDEM Conference

It was good to see a large number of health emergency managers at the North Island CDEM conference. There were some excellent speakers and the event was extremely well organised.

One of the speakers for the break out sessions was stuck in the Thailand due to the civil unrest so Greg Wilson, the Environment Bay of Plenty CDEM Group Coordinator and conference organiser, was kind enough to let me fill one of the vacant slots . 20 mins is not a long time to show the national emergency management and GIS capability that is now available to health but the main points were put across I hope - especially the wealth of information that a health agency representative from a DHB, Public Health Unit or Ambulance region could offer to a Group or local EOC.

The CDEM Group also met half of the travel and accommodation costs for Dudley Wait. Dudley is the Deputy Director for the Regional Medical Operations Centre in South Texas, as well as being the Director of Emergency Medical Services for the City of Schertz. Dudley gave a great talk on the Friday around the readiness, response and recovery issues around accommodating 27.000 displaced people during hurricane Ike and Gustav. South Texas has WebEOC available in 82 hospitals as well as a range of city and county EOCs.

Unfortunately I missed the last day of the conference as I had to attend a funeral in Wellington. Luckily I got to hear Dudley speak at the Health Emergency Managers conference in Wellington the Monday afternoon. It was also the third time I've been to Rotorua with work and had plans fall through to get some mountain biking in afterwards...next time.

Thanks to all who organised such a great conference.