How Response Teams Can Adapt to New Challenges During COVID-19 Using D4H

*While this article is about a real Police Force team, no names and stock photos have been used to preserve anonymity for security purposes.

Background

Some of the team’s duties include conducting land and underwater searches, locating missing persons in remote and difficult areas (bush, snow, mountains, coastal and inland waterways, and vertical cliffs), and underwater dives to recover stolen property, weapons, evidence, vehicles, and other objects. The specialized SAR Unit also often works alongside other specialist units of the police force.

The Challenge

COVID-19 and Its Impact

With the outbreak of COVID-19, in-person meetings and training sessions were no longer possible. The team made the move to remote work as much as possible in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of their crew.

With new remote working measures came the challenge of coordinating team activities without a physical central meeting point. The team needed a virtual environment where they could communicate and collaborate remotely. From tracking equipment inspections, training priorities, and callouts they needed one software solution to create a common operating picture for every aspect of their readiness and operational responses.

The Solution

Cloud-Based Software

“D4H has enabled us to react and respond effectively to new restrictions around remote working during COVID-19. We have been able to maintain our procedures and processes and the whole team can stay on the same page at all times with all of our jobs kept in one remotely accessible location.”

The team deployed D4H’s full suite of readiness and response software to ensure that they can operate as usual during COVID-19. They maintain situational awareness using D4H which ensures good handovers during personnel changeovers.

Equipment inspections, services, and repairs are all tracked with D4H Equipment Management and anyone from the team can log into the platform and check the location or status of any item. They use D4H Personnel and Training to ensure their training priorities are clear and governance can easily manage this remotely.

Callouts are tracked, managed, and analyzed using D4H Incident Management and D4H Incident Reporting. The team has created a virtual incident command center environment to be used during an incident where all team members can stay informed and kept up to date regardless of their location.

“We found the software to be incredibly easy to use and implement, it has replaced multiple outdated spreadsheets and improved our overall coordination and communication.”