How Waimakariri District Council Embraced New Technology to Help Run Their Emergency Operations Center

Customer Background

The Waimakariri District lies to the north of the Waimakariri River in North Canterbury, New Zealand and encompasses roughly 60,000 people. The Waimakariri District Council is responsible for the delivery of ‘Civil Defence Emergency Management’ within its jurisdiction. The responsibilities of the council include risk identification, risk reduction, preparation for emergencies, creating agency and community capability and capacity to respond to large- scale emergencies; and arrangements for community recovery from such emergencies. While most such emergencies are generated by natural disasters, the council must also consider and be prepared for man-made disasters including civil unrest and military conflict.Waimakariri District Council’s ‘Civil Defence Emergency Management’ responsibilities also include spending time in schools and at community meetings, educating communities about the risks that they are exposed to and how they can be well prepared and equipped for emergency situations.

“These key themes are a small part of our work in Civil Defense Emergency Management but are the most important elements of our work that really help to build community resilience. Our council staff focus on running an Emergency Operations Center and our volunteers assist in operational field tasks including rescue, evacuation centers, reconnaissance and physical assistance to those in need.”
— Brennan Wiremu, Emergency Management, and Civil Defense Officer

The Emergency Operations Center secures key resources to enable community resilience during disasters such as tsunami warning sirens; high capacity generators to energize designated evacuation centers when electricity failure occurs; emergency fuel supply arrangements to ensure emergency responders can do their work and emergency drinking water supply arrangements.

“We use D4H for managing our trained staff and volunteers and to help run our EOC.”
— Brennan Wiremu, Emergency Management, and Civil Defense Officer

Challenges and Needs

Within the Waimakariri District Council, there was a lack of good situational awareness, a common operating picture and an information sharing platform for the Emergency Operations Center.

“The system that we had been using previously was not user-friendly; it required large time investments to customize it and to train staff to use it.”
— Brennan Wiremu, Emergency Management, and Civil Defense Officer

Waimakariri began the search for a new solution for their ‘Civil Defence Emergency Management’ responsibilities that would provide an efficient personnel admin and training management platform and a common operating picture in emergencies.

Solution

“We heard about D4H through recommendations from Christchurch City Council and Selwyn District Council, who are local users of D4H.”
— Brennan Wiremu, Emergency Management, and Civil Defense Officer

With D4H, they have been able to overcome the challenges that they had been facing. D4H provides good situational awareness, a common operating picture, and an efficient way to record and transfer information.

The Waimakariri District Council found D4H’s Incident Management solution to be extremely intuitive to use, staff and volunteers easily adjusted to the new system. They have had positive experiences with D4H and have been very impressed by the level of customer support provided.

“D4H’s background customer service support is excellent.”
—Brennan Wiremu, Emergency Management, and Civil Defense Officer

The Council has found D4H to be particularly useful for tracking personnel and training. The administrative burden in the council has been greatly reduced as personnel can update their own information, saving time and improving the overall efficiency and coordination of both staff and volunteers.

“We can quickly and easily create accurate records of people’s training states, training development pathways. D4H Personnel and Training has saved us a lot of time in determining and reporting on trained states, training attendance rates, and allowing our people to engage in this information recording.”
— Brennan Wiremu, Emergency Management, and Civil Defense Officer