Someone's just told me it's Christmas

How did that happen?? The team were leaving the office and said see you in the New Year! It certainly has been a busy year and the Emergency Management Team in the Group has been pretty busy. Our main benchmark for the year was the approval of our CDEM Group Plan (which you can download from here).

We got off pretty lightly this year, with no significant emergencies - just your usual snow storms, wind storms, heavy rainfall, storm surges, earthquakes and flooding. We also activated and evacuated for a potential tsunami which was a little out of the ordinary I must admit. All in all, I think the team is pretty well set up and working together. The level of co-operation across the Group's membership is excellent and if we need to circle the wagons for an event I have confidence in our ability to work together.

Next year will have a few interesting activities and I've been working on my work programme for the first 6 months to try and squeeze it all in. I'll post more on that in the New Year.

On that note, I'll sign off for the year and wish everyone a very happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

EMIS implementation phase

The Ministry have yet to announce the successful provider for the national Emergency Management Information System but are forging ahead with planning the next phase of the project. This week nominations have been sought from the CDEM sector for two Group level and two territorial authority level representatives to be on the EMIS configuration team.

David Coetzee is suggesting that the first roll-out of the EMIS will be in the middle of next year (which fits well with my earlier predictions). The Config Team will be looking at the basic structure of the EMIS and setting up work flows and processes, as well as some templates as part of the core package. A 'straw-man' will be developed by MCDEM staff for presentation to CDEM Groups as a teaser and to solicit feedback on ideas and preferences of the Groups. Once this presentation has been completed and Groups had an opportunity for input, the Config Team will set about producing the core EMIS.

The time commitment of the Config Team is not insignificant and could be 3+ weeks. It is important however that we get it right as the future of CDEM will be significantly influenced by the EMIS. If you are interested in being nominated for a role in the Config Team, contact your CDEM Group's Manager for the terms of reference and nomination process.

Viewing the calendars

On the sidebar, there are a couple of links to Group calendars. It is our intention to use our Google calendars as the source data for our calendars. This means that no matter where you find an on-line Group calendar, it should be drawing its dates and detail from the same location. We're starting with the calendars here on the blog but you may find soon that we also have the calendars on the Horizons website and also on the CDEM Group website once this is finally up and running. If you want the code to link our calendars to your site, please let me know.

In the past, we've posted a pdf of our calendar to the website - not only was this long winded, but often we would get conflicting calenders. Using an on-line calendar will hopefully eliminate this risk - with the current on-line version being the latest.

I have discovered that you need to be logged into a Google account to view the calendar - its pretty painless and you can use your existing e-mail account to create a Google account (if you don't already have one) - I'd strongly recommend it. Just follow the simple instructions and don't forget to verify your account from the e-mail they send you.

Emergency Management Summer Institute

I have received a wad of brochures in the mail today for next year's Summer Institute. The programme runs for 5 days from 15 - 19 March 2010 at the Massey University Wellington Campus. The programme is co-sponsored by GNS Science, Massey University, University of Canterbury and MetService.

The programme looks good with an impressive line-up of speakers covering

• Emergency management planning,
• Developing effective all-hazards warning systems,
• Evacuation planning and welfare,
• Classroom in the coach, and
• The role of public education, community engagement and public participation in building resilient communities.

For more information about the programme, you can download the brochure here.

Benchmark reached!

It's been a few days since my last posting... a few of the team have been tied up with the National Special Olympics Games being held here in Palmerston North. Last Friday morning however was an important date for the CDEM Group! The Joint Standing Committee met and approved the new CDEM Group Plan. This is the culmination of about 18 months worth of planning and consultation and is the start of the next era of CDEM for our Group.

The Plan will be available on the Horizons web site in the next few days. We will also be publishing hard copies of the Plan for distribution.

Exercise Eastern Comms

As a prelude to Exercise Eastern Oil in April next year, several Horizons staff participated in an exercise today to test communications solutions for the east coast of the Horizons Region. Based at the Akitio Boat Club, teams deployed north and south to evaluate possibilities and issues for a marine oil spill response including communications challenges, beach access, foreshore types and possible factors for clean-up activities (such as wildlife). The teams used the Council Team Talk radios, ESB 164 emergency services liaison channel from a temporary repeater (set up with the assistance of Tararua District Council staff), and satellite phones. We borrowed two repeaters, one from the NZ Fire Service and the other from Tararua DC. Teams also took photographs, tested GPS units and the tracking function of our SPOT personal trackers.

The Incident Control Point (ICP) was set up in the Boat Club - great venue! We tested deploying our mobile office including three laptops, colour printer, BGAN satellite terminal, telephone exchange, GPS enabled camera, radios, data projector and screen plus the usual whiteboards and the ancillary equipment. In addition, we had several staff with their laptops and an iPhone. We also have the advantage that Horizons has a router operating in the Boat Club to transmit photos of Akitio back to the office. Most of us hooked into the router for fast and inexpensive connectivity. We Skyped, Twittered, SMS'd, and Googled... now that I think about it, the only thing we didn't test was the fax.

I'm really pleased with the way everything performed. We've got a couple of little things to follow up in the next few weeks but the baseline preparation is well underway for Exercise Eastern Oil. Evan did a great job of planning this exercise, so a big thumbs up for him!

Barrier training

The Foxton Beach flood barrier was erected last night by the local NZ Fire Service crew. This is the second time the crew has been out to practice setting the barrier up. There are still a few improvements that can be made to the barrier itself and the suggestions of the local Fire crew have helped to build capability in this area.

The barrier (which looks like a big white sausage) is designed to be erected during high flow or storm surge events that will push river levels up to the stopbank. There is a short section of bank that is lower than the rest to make provision for the road. This section is blocked off by the water filled barrier to complete the flood protection works as required. Drivers could still get past given the firm ground conditions last night and the low slope of the surrounding stopbank.

It took the crew about 40 minutes to deploy and fill the barrier with about 30,000l of water. Well done guys.

Emergency Management Information System Update

As part of my selection to represent the CDEM Groups I made an undertaking to keep you informed on EMIS progress. Well, we've survived three days of pitch from the three finalists in the EMIS evaluation round. John Hamilton announced at the recent North Island conference that Critchlow (WebEOC), E-Sponder and Intergraph + NC4 were the three providers to be evaluated. Each spent a day demonstrating their products and how these measure up to the RFP requirements plus any additional benefits we would acquire as part of the purchase.

I'm happy to say that we will end up with a product that will do what MCDEM was seeking. We are still to crunch the numbers on the RFP analysis and do a SWOT analysis but my gut feel is that we are down to two contenders. Of these two, I have a personal preference but both have strengths and weaknesses.

Things are on track and I am really excited by the possibilities.

What could this mean for you as CDEM Groups? Well, CDEM Groups can still carry on with no change. If you are currently using a system, you won't be expected to change - although there may be long-term/big picture benefits in adopting the national EMIS. If you are currently considering an EMIS for your Group, I'd wait - you might get one for free. At this stage, it looks like Groups can ride on the coat-tails of MCDEM provided you stick to the core process and principles of the generic workflow for Group and Local EOCs. If you want to tailor this, you would probably be required to purchase a licence (price unknown as this is provider and add-on dependent). To be honest I didn't think any of it was unreasonable on the price front.

What's next - there is a big chunk of work still to happen - we need to be really clear what a generic workflow looks like. What are the job descriptions, what are the plan templates and forms, authorisation processes, generic dashboards, etc etc that Groups would want to see in a core package. These can be tailored to some degree including look and feel, branding etc for each Group but still provide for Group and national roll-up of data. In some cases, this may mean a slight adjustment to your internal processes (or you purchase a licence and tailor the package to suit your processes without corrupting national level data feed requirements). For me, the war cry is consistency and I do think we are seeing some real leadership from MCDEM on this. I hope that as a sector we play the game - this is the start of a new era in CDEM in this country.

9th Annual Emergency Management Conference

22-23 February 2010, Duxton Hotel, Wellington, is the time of the 9th Annual Emergency Management Conference. The programme is looking pretty good this year and at least one of the presenters will be brilliant (gee I wonder who that'll be).

Here's a link to the conference site where you can download a copy of the programme and registration material.