Spill tracker developed

During a recent marine oil spill exercise at Akitio, the complexities of local currents became a small challenge for the team. Over a 'lemonade' that night, we got talking about the possibility of tracking the spill. We had most of what was needed, it was just a matter of putting the bits and pieces together.

The heart of the unit is a 'Spider' from SpiderTracks. We had one of these sitting on the shelf for an emergency or any of the team that wanted to track a 4WD or quad bike outside our regular GPS/cellular network. We bought a Pelican case, a 12V 4.0Ah battery and a cig socket.

The case naturally wanted to float on its lid so we mounted the Spider face down in the bottom of the case and the battery on top. This will make recharging simple too. Once we had the gear in the case, it was a little less likely to self right to float on the lid, so we added a metal plate into the lid. Once this was done, we couldn't force it to float the wrong way up... we needed the Spider to be either facing the sky or on its side, but not upside down.

We've left the unit running to test battery life and got 47hrs 50min with an automatic ping every 5 minutes. The Spider sends its location via satellite and we can tailor the ping rate depending on our needs from the SpiderTracks website once the unit has been deployed. We could track the location in real-time from the website.

We're not exactly sure whether the unit will track exactly the same as oil on water but we figured it will be close enough for us to know where to send the teams doing a reccy. Wind might have a little more influence on the unit - but it won't be much. The next step will be chucking the unit off a bridge and tracking it down the river - simulating throwing it from an aircraft.

One of the team here is also a marine SAR advisor... he reckons it might also be useful for search and rescue type activities too - we'd happily make it available to help out.

Awesome new Foxton Beach webcam

The Manawatu Marine Boating Club has installed a new webcam on the boat club at Foxton Beach. Overlooking the boat ramp and carpark, this is an excellent quality camera that updates every 10 seconds... incredible!! Pity the weather wasn't so flash today when I grabbed the latest image. If you want to check out the Club's site... go here.

Good job team.

EMIS roll-out delayed until October

From the EMIS website this afternoon...

Following the very successful configuration workshops held in March, many weeks of work have been done to further elaborate the agreed requirements to ensure they meet the needs of MCDEM, CDEM Groups and TA's. During this elaboration, it was clear that some additional information was required to be incorporated into the EMIS portals and user feedback has confirmed this.

In addition, Microsoft has just released SharePoint 2010 as an upgrade of SharePoint 2007 and MCDEM has decided to use SharePoint 2010 as the foundation of EMIS, instead of SharePoint 2007. SharePoint 2010 is better equiped to provide the functionaility the configuration team agreed during the configuration workshops, in particular around resource and task management where significantly better outcomes can be achieved on SharePoint 2010. It also means that we avoid rolling out EMIS based on SharePoint 2007 now, only to have to repeat the process soon after to upgrade to SharePoint 2010. Utilising SharePoint 2010 provides a more future focused approach and no system outages or re-training would be needed to migrate to SharePoint 2010 .

In order to allow the required time to complete configuration and development for the initial EMIS build on SharePoint 2010, then to fully test the solution and offer system training to trainers and administrators, a decision has been made to extend the EMIS go live date. It was felt the benefits we gain far outweigh the delay, and it provides a more future focussed platform to allow any future EMIS releases to be more easily integrated. We are in the final stage of re-planning the timeframes with our key suppliers, but it is envisaged the go live date will now be early October 2010.

We are aware of the potential impact on the use of the EMIS in the planned national CDEM exercise scheduled for 20 October and will make every attempt to deliver an EMIS well before this time. However, it may eventuate that insufficient time is afforded agencies to gain a suitable level of confidence with the EMIS before the exercise. If this is the case, we would not expect users to use the EMIS during the exercise, that could be optional.

Tsunami Strategy and Action Plans

A small team of Emergency Managers from within the Manawatu-Wanganui CDEM Group are beavering away on the first draft of our Group's Tsunami Strategy and Action Plans. This will document a consistent approach to tsunami response for the Group and will form the basis for consultation with communities that are potentially affected by tsunami run-up.

Run-up modelling has been undertaken for the Group by GNS Science and this is the foundation for the Plan. The zones shown in the picture are indicative of evacuation zones. The Red Zone is the beach and is obviously the area most at risk from tsunami (even small ones). The Orange Zone is likely to be affected by tsunami with a 500yr return period and the Yellow Zone by 2500yr return events.

In real terms, a 500yr tsunami off shore is likely to be between 2.2 and 3.1m (east coast) but when it reaches the beach, this could double in height. This means potentially 6.2m in height. An added margin for safety therefore sees the Orange Evacuation Zone for our east coast being set at the 10m contour. Attenuation has also been calculated at 0.5% = 1m less wave height for every 200m inland.

The 500yr event for Wanganui onshore height is 7.2m, the 2500yr event for our east coast is 35m and for Wanganui is 15.6m. 35m is a pretty big jump in sea level and an event of this magnitude would be massively destructive all around New Zealand.

The team will keep working on the project and we intend to test the Plan during national Exercise Tangaroa in October.

New Director's Guide - Welfare in an emergency

Welfare in an emergency - Director's Guideline for CDEM Groups was published in PDF format on the MCDEM website this morning. Available here.

Links to on-line resources (checklists and templates) contained in the guideline will be added to the website in the near future and print publication will follow.

Welfare in an emergency - Director's Guideline for CDEM Groups provides practical information for organisations with Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) responsibilities in the area of welfare provision. The guideline contains conceptual and functional arrangements to support delivery of welfare in New Zealand. The guideline has been written to be read alongside the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan and the Guide to the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan, where the strategic responsibilities, nationally and operationally, regarding welfare in an emergency are formally outlined.