Guardian received a lot of attention in 2014 after winning a string of high profile awards including The National iAwards, The Queensland Resilient Australia Awards and The Global Disaster Resilience App Challenge sponsored by the United Nations.
Guardian was the software used by both of the areas worst affected by Cyclone Marcia; Livingstone Shire Council (Yeppoon), and Rockhampton Regional Council.
Guardian managed all the information flowing through the Local Disaster Coordination Centres such as requests for help, information coming from the public, District and State Requests for assistances, live spatial views of recorded issues featuring fully interactive Cyclone Track Maps as well as Task and Situation Reporting.
The system is designed to continue to run with minimal dependencies, meaning the Coordination Centres were able to continue to operate even when power was cut and communications were overloaded.
As communications became more stable, forward Command Centres were then established using Guardian from a cloud server.
Because Guardian can now be displayed within a web browser, people were able to connect into the network and start using the interface immediately with no local installation required.
This allowed their response to be scaled up even quicker than Marcia’s rapid intensification.
Mark Connors (SES Whitsunday Group Leader) was deployed to assist in the response.
“Guardian always does what it does well.
“We were able to bring in untrained staff to support SES and have them fluently using the software in minutes, literally.
“This allowed myself and the others to get back to strategic planning.”
Police, Fire, SES, Ambulance, Council, The Australian Defense Force and various other liaison officers were able to view critical intelligence as it came to light though the live bulletins feature.
They could also easily share task information through their own channels using Guardian’s export and reporting features.
Other areas were also affected by this event including Isaac, Banana, Gladstone, Bundaberg, Fraser Coast, North Burnett, Noosa and Gympie.
Disaster Management officer Peter Mann from Gympie said he liked Guardian’s features including ‘the ability to have call centre log tasks, the ability to attach photos and documents to jobs, reporting, statistical analysis and interactive maps’.
While we can’t prevent disaster events like these occurring; we can make a difference when it comes to the response.
The councils all did a phenomenal job in the wake of the cyclone and the response from the community was overwhelmingly positive, congratulations.
For more information visit: www.qitplus.com
*Copy supplied by QIT
