Press Clipping
Emergency Services Times - A smarter rescue team just arrived on-scene. Over.
Tuesday, 10th November 2009
Transcript
Source: Emergency Services Times
S.A.R.A.I.D is an urban search & rescue team dedicated to trying to save the lives of innocent victims of disaster. Staffed entirely by volunteers and funded solely by public donations, S.A.R.A.I.D is on call 365 days a year, always ready to provide their services free of charge to any country in need of assistance.
Looking at how to make their team ‘smarter’ with their training, and in organising the response to incidents, S.A.R.A.I.D. have supplied their members with a lifesaving web application for rescue team management. Of?cially launching in the UK at The Emergency Services Show 2009, the tool called Decisions For Heroes helps organisations like Disaster Response, Mountain Rescue, Lifeboats, Coast Guard, and other team-based emergency services record and analyse their rescue operations.
Identifying that better decisions save lives, the software was created to monitor rescuers response readiness, availability, quali?cations, and experience. Armed with a laptop and internet connection, 999 responders can record the details of rescue operations and their training exercises. The software automatically performs analytical charting, draws heat maps, and benchmarks reports to outline areas of strength, weakness, and domain expertise.
Team Leader of S.A.R.A.I.D, Gary Francis, has limited time for paperwork but still needs to know his team's response status at all times. Gary has con?gured Decisions For Heroes to send him an automated weekly brie?ng email every Monday, containing a report of every team member's activity, scheduled training, and availability plans.
This week, the report outlines the 2 incidents the team attended alerts him that 5 members are off-call for 48 hours from Tuesday. Decisions has calculated they will be short on Logistical Support members for training on Wednesday and prompts Michael to confirm extra cover, automatically targeting his text messages to only quali?ed logistics members who are available this week.
Communications and team management are drastically improved by providing a central information store that members can access from home, work, or their mobile handsets in the ?eld. As a team enter their records, the software builds a pro?le of each rescuer, tracking their quali?cations, experience, training hours, and skill-sets automatically. Before the Wednesday training exercise, Gary signs-in to Decisions and runs his regular report on team attendance hours, getting a break-down of members skills requiring attention. Now he can determine what they trained in, who trained in it, and when they last practised a technique.
Easy-to-generate statistics can be used to observe patterns and predict injuries encountered. With integrated mapping, teams can generate heat maps of their incidents and compare them to their training locations. S.A.R.A.I.D uses the mapping to observe hotspots where incidents are repeatedly recurring year after year. With this data the team can now research deployment contingencies with real measurements to show the likelihood of further incidents in the area.
Visit www.saraid.co.uk to ?nd out more about S.A.R.A.I.D., and if you?re in a rescue team, get started with Decisions For Heroes yourselves, sign-up instantly online at www.decisionsforheroes.com or speak directly with Robin Blandford, Director at +44 020 323 999 04, email robin.blandford@decisionsforheroes.com
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