The Phases of an Oil Spill Emergency Response

The Readiness & Planning Phase

Besides the major benefit of providing guidance during an emergency, developing a plan has other advantages. You may discover unrecognized hazardous conditions that would aggravate an emergency situation and you can work to eliminate them. The planning process may bring to light deficiencies, such as the lack of resources (equipment, trained personnel, supplies), or items that can be rectified before an emergency occurs.

It’s also important to ensure your response personnel and response equipment are ready for deployment. You need to be confident that your emergency response team has received all the necessary training and their qualifications are up to date. D4H Personnel & Training is a cloud-based software solution specifically designed to help you build a skillful and experienced team with scheduled training plans that help you prioritize and meet requirements. Achieve readiness with proactive alerts when courses are due. Effortlessly access personnel records, qualifications, availability, attendance, and past experience. Benefit from structured and audit-ready data available on any device.

D4H Equipment Management is your complete equipment readiness solution that will allow you to ensure all of your equipment is ready to respond with proactive inspections, repairs, expiry dates, and service history logs. The platform will simplify your entire inventory down to a single green light of readiness.

The Oil Spill Emergency Response Phase

An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is usually applied to marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters, but spills may also occur on land. The response is an effort to mitigate the impact of an incident on the public and the environment. A large or complex incident will require the cooperation of several agencies.

Your incident pre-plans or ‘Plays’ can be stored in D4H Incident Management which can then be activated and managed in a custom-built ‘Channel’ on the platform. D4H Incident Management is a real-time incident management software that enables the coordination of an effective response to any situation. Easily create a common operating picture, communicate objectives, and collaborate on a resolution using forms, tasks, logs, maps, and status boards. The software is an excellent solution for providing accurate and up-to-date situational awareness when several agencies are collaborating on large-scale emergency responses.

Post-Response Phase

The post-response phase is when lessons learned are recorded. The purpose of lessons learned is to bring together any insights gained during a response that can be usefully applied to future incidents. Lessons learned can make all the difference for future responses and help them to succeed, but first, they must be documented correctly.

D4H Incident Reporting has been specifically designed to alleviate the administrative burden associated with data collection and analysis. With D4H Incident Reporting, it’s easier than ever to automatically generate insightful incident reports with charts, visualizations, and statistics. Access game-changing data to re-evaluate operations, make better decisions and evidence the true value of your organization.

Focus on the Bigger Picture

Statistical analysis of multiple responses from a number of response teams, across a broad time frame, is a fast way of using statistics to see the response trends for an organization. The statistics can afford leadership an unbiased outlook of the risks faced. This allows them to mitigate, introduce preventative measures, and put the necessary preparation in place that is not based on uncorroborated presuppositions.

Back Judgements

Statistics back up assertions. Leaders can find themselves backed into a corner when persuading people to move in a direction. Statistics can provide objective goals, with stand-alone figures, as well as hard evidence to substantiate positions.

Prove Response Team Budget Needs

Response teams face a variety of fiscal issues. Sound statistics can often be the key to unlocking the budget you need. Achieving the maximum possible budget allocation can often only be achieved by proving the worth in your operational activities. The best way to prepare for this budget conversation is to know what’s going on in your organization today and to have the data to prove it.

An Overview of D4H by CEO Robin Blandford