INTRODUCTION:
At the end of March 2006 a workshop was held to discuss the creation of a 'Best Practices' manual for the use of 'GIS in Emergency Management'.The event was organised by John Gibson (Greater Wellington Regional Council) and hosted by Kevin Wilkie (Manukau City Council).

 

WHO WAS THERE?
John Gibson - Greater Wellington Regional Council
Gareth Evans - Environment Bay of Plenty
Helen Grant - Greater Wellington Regional Council
Ian Tidy - Napier City Council
Kevin Wilkie - Manukau City Council
Karl Majorhazi - New Zealand Fire Service
Fazeem Hussein - Auckland City Council
Nick Hardy - Auckland City Council
Gavin Treadgold - Kestrel Group
Bill Warren - New Zealand Navy
Kate Burns - Waitakere City Council
Dean Strachan - Department of Conservation (Rural Fire)
Trevor Mitchell - Department of Conservation (Rural Fire)
Brendan Morris - Environment Waikato
Roy Robinson - Auckland International Airport

WORKSHOP OUTCOMES:

1. The guidelines should be publicly available free of charge.
2. The manual should be primarily focused at GIS practitioners as a guide to how they can help emergency managers.
3. The guidelines should focus on the readiness, response and recovery phases of an emergency.
4. The guidelines should not be incident, agency, or software specific.
5. It was suggested that the guidelines should include responsibilities, and processes for collecting, managing, and disseminating information.

A list of guideline heading where created and grouped into three areas; these being Emergency Management Principles, Being Prepared, and Doing the Job/Deployment.  The headings or topics being discussed in each area are:

Emergency management principles:

• context (including 4Rs)
• CIMS
• standard operating procedures
• workflowleadership and accountability
• liability
• staffing
• competence (GIS skill level required)
• CDEM Group capacity and capability
• guiding principles for software licensing and data liability.

Being prepared:

Doing the job/deployment:

People volunteered to look at specific headings in this list.  We are reporting back during June 2006.

 

If you want more details, please contact John Gibson at Greater Wellington Regional Council ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

 

So look forward to the next installment.

Cheers Ian