City of Casey Mayor, Councillor Janet Halsall, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Anthony Byrne, recently launched the new Casey Alert Location Manager system. Known as CALM, the computer based system will support Council’s emergency management and recovery function.
Located in the outer south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the City of Casey is primarily made up of large blocks of land for grazing, however its residential areas are fast increasing.
Councillor Halsall said with 230,000 residents, Casey is Victoria’s most populous municipality, and one of the fastest growing.
“As such, CALM has the potential to save many Casey lives and valuable assets,” she said. “The City of Casey is often required to support the emergency services in the management of local incidents. This could be anything from a chemical factory fire, to localised flooding, or storms affecting Casey’s residents. CALM was designed to meet some of the challenges of situations like these.
“For instance, when a crisis such as a flood occurs, CALM will enable us to quickly identify who or what is likely to be affected in the danger zone, and who needs the assistance of relevant authorities.”
Council’s Manager Community Safety, Caroline Bell, said Casey received a $38,500 grant from Emergency Management Australia in 2006. The grant funded the development of CALM – an emergency management Geographical Information System (GIS) to assist in mapping vulnerable communities in times of emergency.
“As part of the project, we integrated current listings of vulnerable people and buildings into one package, which then had the ability to provide reports on demographics and community profiles,” Caroline Bell said. “The package combined information such as Council records, basic land use features, lifeline utilities, and community service information.
“Casey’s Community Safety and Information Technology teams worked together with MapInfo to develop the program, which operates from a laptop computer. This means CALM can operate either at the Municipal Emergency Coordination Centre or on the scene of an incident.”
The software enables Council to easily visualise, understand and view data so that it can coordinate and manage emergency response services.
Caroline Bell said the program is user friendly, with many of its key functions being icon driven. This means end users require little training, as many current computer applications currently operate in this manner.
For further information contact Caroline Bell on (03) 9705 5200.
