Stand down

I have returned from my UNDAC deployment earlier than expected. Having only made it to Brisbane and met with the team, I've had to return home due to a family emergency. Here is a link to the ReliefWeb page for Papua New Guinea for those still interested in the sea swell events.

As I am now officially on leave, the blog is likely to be quiet for the next few weeks.

I'd like to wish every a happy and safe Christmas and prosperous New Year.

The things we do...

Well, I thought the blog was going to go quiet for a few weeks while I'm on leave. Cancel that! A call has gone out for an UNDAC team to assist with the coastal inundation from unusually high sea levels in Papua New Guinea. Here is a link to the information on Reliefweb (this is updated regularly).

A team of four UNDAC members has been selected to assist with the response, especially as a second and possibly more significant event is coming through in the next few days. The team comprises Peter Muller (OCHA Fiji), Odeda Benin-Goren (Israel), Maj. Alan Toh (Singapore) and me. We will also have two IT experts from the Asia Pacific Humanitarian Partnership coming with us from Singapore.

At this stage, I depart on Tuesday morning. If time and communications permit, I'll keep you posted.

Group Plan update

The Joint Committee met last Friday and received and endorsed the first two chapters of the draft CDEM Group Plan (Chapter 1: Background and Chapter 8: Management and Governance). I provided some background for the Committee on the process to date and the sorts of discussions we have been having.

A couple of the key points were:

• Centrally co-ordinated and locally delivered emergency management is key to a consistent approach across the Group,
• A triennial business plan, agreed to and funded collectively by members, will drive the work programmes of the Group,
• We are following a nationally consistent approach to the layout for the revised Plan,
• The CEG and Joint Committee will endorse the entire draft Plan before it goes out for public consultation.

Members were happy with the progress to date and noted the effort that had been put in so far. Some feedback was received about the complexity of the Plan and discussion was had on the possibility of a summarised version being available for people that don't require the full technical and legal version of the Plan. This possibility will be explored with CEG members.

Long distance camera testing

Members of the Red Cross Information Technology and Telecommunications Emergency Response Unit have been undertaking some training in Wellington today. Tony Groome (from our neck of the woods) borrowed the GPS camera to show the team what we are up to. Tony hadn't used the camera or Groove before and this afternoon I've received pictures of the training in the Groove synchronised folder, commented with the team in Groove and processed photos and put them in the folder for them.

This proves the camera over slightly longer distances and I'm confident that with a very little bit of training, most people could figure out how to drive this for a reconnaissance mission.

Well done team and good luck with the rest of the training.

NICDEM Conference

Delegates from across the North Island, a few from the South and even Tonga (good on you Maliu) gathered together in Rotorua for the North Island Civil Defence Emergency Management Conference yesterday and today.

Unfortunately I could only make it for day 1 but the region is well represented with about 11 delegates in attendance. Some great speakers filled the audience with hope for resolving what has been a tricky problem for for EMOs... fast moving consumer goods during pandemic emergencies. The Aussies have certainly made excellent progress and don't seem to have run out of steam yet.

The Horizons presentation went well (if a little hurried) and several people have already asked me to explain further some of the benefits we've seen in Groove and just how we're using it. The technology didn't let us down in front of a live audience (phew). Thanks to the team for helping pull this one off.

A good selection of exhibitors were on hand to catch our eyes (and order books) during the breaks.

Hats off to Greg Wilson and the team for organising a great conference.

Japanese CyberCafe

In anticipation of the Regional Incident Management Team (RIMT) exercise this week, demonstration of Groove and other tools to Ruapehu District Council, and the EM Conference next week, we've had the mobile office all set up and tested, downloaded all those updates that seem to arrive between activities and reminded ourselves how things work. Comments were made about it looking like a Japanese cybercafe!

The RIMT exercise is based at Landguard Bluff in Wanganui on Thursday and Friday and will involve 40-50 staff mostly from across the region. The team will be running through their response to large scale rural fires.

The Ruapehu District Council will be looking at the use of Groove in their EOC and figuring out just what they need to do to get on the Group-wide system.

The conference presentation is on Technology in Action and will be a song and dance routine between Rosco, Evan and me.

Finally, the Inmarsat BGAN hardware will be here on Thursday with expected service available from March. This means we can keep communicating when all the phones (landline and cellular) are down.

Hunting for a PRFO

Ross Fothergill will be leaving the team on the 3rd December for a role back in the NZ Army. Ross has spent the off season getting us ready for the fire season, pulling together training packages and preparing for the NRFA audit.

This means though that the hunt is on again for a qualified person to meet the demands of PRFO for two rural fire districts (Manawatu and Rangitikei). The role is based in Palmerston North, with an office in Marton, and goes as far north as Taihape. The details of the job and how to apply can be found here. I've posted a few things on the blog in the past about rural fire, they can be found here.

Near real-time snaps

At last we have solved the challenge of transmitting photos from the field to the decision makers in the Group Emergency Co-ordination Centre. We've had the components for a while now but have finally put them together. Here's how it works...

The Ricoh Caplio 500SE camera has a GPS unit mounted on the hot shoe. This means that when we take photos outside we get a GPS fix embedded in the photo tag. The camera has bluetooth capability and can send the photos as they are taken to a computer that is nearby.

We've partnered the camera with an Asus eeePC which is a very small, lightweight, solid state laptop. We've connected a vodem to the laptop to get us on the internet whilst in the field. The laptop has Microsoft Groove 2007 running on it (as do all our EM PCs).

So... as we take a photo, we press OK to send a copy of the photo by bluetooth to the laptop. The folder that the photo ends up in has been set up to synchronise via Groove. You can invite as many Groove contacts as you like to share the folder but I would limit that list. At the moment we only use one other computer in the ECC to receive images.

Once in the ECC we copy the images out to another folder (to prevent circular synchronisation) and then process the photos using the software that comes with the camera. GPS Photolink takes each photo with a GPS location embedded in it and creates a number of user determined outputs including GIS, web and Google Earth outputs as well as watermarked photos (like that above). This means that within a few minutes of the photos being taken, we can see where it was taken plus the photo itself.

We'll be demonstrating this process at the conference next month in Rotorua along with some more info on Groove as an ECC/EOC collaboration tool.

Group Plan... a work in progress

At yesterday's CEG meeting I presented a 'warts and all' version of the Group Plan. This is very much a work in progress but given the nature of the material to date and the fact that it doesn't sit neatly in a single chapter, it was just as easy to give members the whole document. Now this might come back to haunt me but ces't la vie. Clearly we haven't addressed some areas yet and really we've only workshopped our strategic direction and management & governance material. I'm currently working on readiness and response but haven't quite finished these yet (another workshop next week).

The CEG signed off on the Management & Governance chapter and the Background, recognising that we will see the entire Plan again before fully endorsing it before the Joint Standing Committee puts it out for public consultation and Ministerial comment. We may tweek the background a bit but we are confident in the M&G chapter.

If you'd like to have a sneaky peek, here it is.