About Monmouth County OEM

How They Started Using D4H

Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is based in New Jersey, USA, in an area known as the Jersey Shore, they are a division of the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office. The emergency management team is responsible for the development, maintenance, and implementation of the County’s All-Hazard Emergency Operations Plan.

Prior to becoming D4H users in 2022 Monmouth County OEM was using Excel spreadsheets to manage their equipment, emergency management inventory, and assets. The team also had an ArcGIS platform for damage assessments.

It was a referral from the New Jersey EMS Taskforce that introduced Monmouth County to D4H, the team took Scott through a live incident showing him how they could do a Situation Report (SITREP) in D4H, the team at Monmouth were delighted to have a alternative to Microsoft Word for their SITREPs. After demoing multiple emergency management software platforms, the team knew that D4H was the best fit for their needs.

"We like D4H because of the ability to modify a board, a dashboard, fix something quickly on the fly without any admin backend help. If we have a problem or we want to add something to a form or dashboard we can do it in real time."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Scott first saw D4H in action at a real incident during an air conditioning breakdown at a local hospital.

"They were using D4H for the incident, I saw how it worked and said thats it we need it!"
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Location & Hazards

Monmouth County is less than an hour from New York City, it is a large and diverse area encompassing 662 square miles with a population of around 640,000 people. It features a densely populated urban region alongside 27 miles of Atlantic coastline. Despite its development, the county also includes substantial farmland.

A significant portion of the emergency management team's work focuses on preparedness. Many of their incidents are weather-related, including flooding, wind storms, hurricanes, and, on rare occasions, earthquakes. The county experiences all four seasons, often with unpredictable and changeable weather patterns. Other incidents include fires, power outages, hazmat, and traffic accidents. The team employs an all-hazards approach to its emergency management strategy.

Community Collaboration

Monmouth County OEM has a full-time staff of seven professionals. In addition, they put together a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) made up of volunteers. The volunteer members of the CERT gain training to help Emergency Management during disasters, currently the team has 54 active members working as their reserve forces. The volunteers are present during large-scale incidents to augment the full-time staff members, serving as a force multiplier.

As part of their Emergency Management preparation, Monmouth County OEM conducts community outreach efforts. One initiative is the 'Register Ready' program, specifically tailored for individuals who may require evacuation assistance during a disaster. By registering, these individuals ensure that emergency responders can promptly reach them during an incident and facilitate their safe evacuation. Two additional programs bear the acronym 'S.T.O.R.M.' representing 'Seniors Taking on Readiness Measures.' and 'Students Taking on Readiness Measures'. Monmouth OEM actively reaches out to the community to provide preparedness information, offer course completion opportunities, and distribute preparedness kits.

"If the community is prepared that is one less person that will need our help during an emergency."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

How Monmouth County OEM Leverages D4H Incident Management

The Monmouth team utilizes D4H Incident Management for various aspects of their emergency management operations. This includes the 'Register Ready' program, with over 3,500 residents registered for assistance, all of whom are tracked within D4H.

The team also employs Incident Management for their exercises and drills, spanning across the 53 municipalities within Monmouth County. The most recent drill was for resource requests, tracking the participation of the individual municipalities.

D4H allows the Monmouth Emergency Management team to track their people, including their CERT member's availability, interns, and their training.

"D4H does a nice export into PDF so we can run our monthly reports."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Monmouth OEM created its damage assessment dashboards, using those of another county in the North. They utilized Extension P4cks, which facilitate sharing packs with other counties. This spared Monmouth from having to develop its own system, as the groundwork had already been laid by the collaborating team.

The team keeps an incident also known as play running per year, this is a real-time situation for the everyday events that are going on.

"One of the goals for my team is to not only use the D4H software three or four times a year, I want everyone to be familiar with it. We use D4H all day everyday."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Real-Time Situational Awareness in Emergency Management

Monmouth County boasts a state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center equipped with high-tech amenities. Throughout the facility, including the Command Staff offices, they have screens displaying incident information. Situational awareness is very important to the team, they get a lot of value from the D4H dashboards.

Monmouth OEM feeds a monitor into a TV system within their headquarters and they can control what is showing in every room throughout the building. Every TV throughout the building has about 10 channels of newsfeed, they also have an OEM assigned channel, and a camera, one of those channels can be the D4H dashboard, an incident, SITREP, or whatever is needed.

The team has developed what they call a level four dashboard, it shows their everyday operations, and that can be displayed on all TVs throughout their headquarters, and shared with law enforcement. Other departments can choose what channel is showing at what time for them depending on what information is necessary for them at that time.

"If we suddenly have an earthquake everyone can switch onto the emergency management board, and be able to see that dashboard realtime and what is going on."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Situational awareness is so important for emergency management at Monmouth, that through D4H it allows the team to manage an incident at a quick pace by sharing information, teams can quickly find out the locations of power outages, shelters during a hurricane can access D4H's real-time updates enable quick assessment of shelter capacities, enhancing overall response efficiency.

The team uses D4H to build out their tasks, when a user logs in during an incident they immediately see all of their tasks assigned to them, and the Emergency Management staff can easily see the progress of each task, with the task checklist feature. This also allows their intelligence room to keep track of what is happening during an incident.

How D4H's Live SITREP Saves Hours on Updates

The Monmouth OEM team finds the situation reports also known as SITREPs in D4H an invaluable feature while managing incidents. The SITREPs streamline the consolidation of all incident information into one location, facilitating sharing with Command Staff, County Administration, and other officials. The dashboard serves as a centralized repository, minimizing inquiries directed towards Scott and his team by ensuring all necessary information is readily accessible, saving the team a lot of time.

"A game changer for me is the situation report, the ability to share a situation report live link or to individual emails, it saved me 30 to 40 phone calls for the recent earthquake alone."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

The SITREP's capacity for easy sharing enables the team to swiftly disseminate press releases to the public during incidents, enhancing speed and efficiency.

"The live link from the situation report is phenomenal, it's so easy to share."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

How Monmouth OEM stays on top of their Code Blues

Anything that the team and Monmouth were tracking on an Excel spreadsheet, they have input into D4H Incident Management dashboards.

"We did this for two reasons, one it looks great on the dashboard to get real-time information, two it keeps all the users very fluent with the software, its great for reference."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

In New Jersey, 'Code Blue' legislation falls under Emergency Management. Monmouth County's duties under Code Blue include the activation of warming centers when temperatures drop below 32 degrees. The team initiates an alert using D4H, allowing them to record the start and end dates, add detailed notes to address inquiries and eliminate the need for cumbersome and difficult-to-manage Excel spreadsheets.

"It keeps the users in the system at all times which I love."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

How Monmouth OEM Uses D4H to Track Emergency Management Equipment

Monmouth County OEM became a D4H user of Equipment Management in 2022, the team had a lot of equipment and they were looking for software capable of efficiently managing all their assets in a centralized location, eliminating the need for multiple Excel spreadsheets. They have 8,000 assets and growing all currently tracked in D4H, everything from vehicles to disposable COVID-19 tests. With D4H Equipment Management all assets are barcoded, photographed, and assigned a location, this supports the team with audits, re-ordering necessary equipment, and tracking the existing locations of equipment such as generators.

"Equipment Management makes our life nice and easy."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Monmouth County OEM employs color-coded tracking in their asset management through Equipment Management. Each asset is pinpointed on a map for location tracking, with pins color-coded according to its status: green for fully functional, amber for operational but due for service, and red for out of service.

"Keeping a real time supply of all of our stuff is a lifesaver for us on time and maintenance."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

Implementing Equipment Management

When Monmouth County became a D4H user they had the task of gathering all their existing data and inputting it into D4H, this data was all over the place, on paper in binders, on Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and handwritten notes. Much of their equipment lacked photographic documentation, and they lacked a barcode system prior to going live with D4H. Their implementation with D4H took a couple of weeks, with weekly calls, with the implementation team.

"After the first meeting we hit the ground running, it was a good implementation."
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— Scott Nielsen, Emergency Management Coordinator at Monmouth County Office of Emergency Management (OEM)

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