Emergency Services

Noggin's OCA solutions can assist Ambulance Services, Fire Services, State Emergency Services, Emergency Operations Centres and All Hazards Management Facilities with the following types of incidents or uses:

Emergency management
Disaster response
Major hazards
OHS&E incidents
Capability matching and resource deployment
Crisis communication

OCA supports:

Use	Description
Emergency Management	Emergency services play a leading role in planning for and responding to major emergencies, whether such incidents have an environmental or civilian impact. OCA provides emergency managers with all the tools they need in one secure online place, saving time in an emergency, helping to make informed decisions quickly, and enabling faster and more effective responses. OCA can help with all aspects of disaster response and recovery, including communication, resource management, situational awareness, and co-ordination of shared resources with other agencies via the OCA Connect interoperability tool.
Deploy & track resources	Emergency Services are in the business of moving logistics. OCA's resource management tools can complement operational dispatch systems by providing tactical and strategic mobilisation and tracking of resources. Human Resource and asset resource information can be integrated with third party software systems, and capabilities to deal with incidents can be assessed on the fly. The OCA asset and tasking modules can be used to allocate any resources to incidents or tasks, be they human, fixed, mobile, vehicles or equipment. Tasking can be internal as well as external, with requests to third party agencies monitored in real-time via OCA Connect. Resources can be located and allocated geographically, by availability, by capability, by type, or by cost. You can also track costs against resource requests or allocations, to easily manage the overall cost of a response or recovery effort. OCA's simple data management tools allow you to create new types of requests or asset categories on the fly.
Requests for assistance	Requests for assistance for emergency services agencies come from the public, intra agency or extra agency during a major incident. One of the primary challenges in fulfilling these requests is ensuring that your resources deal with the highest priority incidents first, and that resources don't waste time being deployed to the same incident more than once, or travelling unnecessarily when a closer resource could attend to the request. OCA can bring in requests for assistance from multiple sources in real time through the OCA Connect tool, and allows you to view the entire history of a request until the job is properly closed. OCA can be used to allocate any resources to requests or incidents be they human, fixed, mobile, vehicles or equipment. Not only can you assign resources to your own staff within the system, but you can also send external requests for assistance to third party agencies using the OCA communications gateway. Resources can be tracked and allocated in many ways - geographically, by resource availability, by capability, by type, or by cost. You can also enter costs against resource requests or allocations, to easily track the overall cost of a response or recovery effort. OCA's simple data management tools allow you to create as many types of request that you need, including custom forms and workflows.
Getting communications out - managing media and social media	OCA's tasking system can also be used to deal with any type of structured request, such as media requests. If you have a public affairs function within your emergency services organisation that has the responsibility of getting the word out to the public, or respond to media requests, the assistance module can also be used to deal with such requests in a structured and co-ordinated manner. In some instances, you may need to follow a particular protocol in terms of your response, especially if the incident involves injuries or casualties, and the OCA workflow tool can assist you in doing this.
Get mobile	Emergency services work means a great deal of field work, and that means personnel need to be able to access critical information not just via computers, but via mobile devices. The OCA is optimised for delivery across multiple devices, including Blackberries, iPhones, Android phones as well as a variety of tablet devices. Whilst OCA is good at distributing information, it can also consume information from external information sources whether they be roaming GIS tracking systems, tracking resources or personnel. OCA allows you to bring multiple sources together, and access that information in real time-in the field. Often an incident will affect a geographical area, or multiple areas. The OCA geospatial tools allow you to plot affected areas and send communications to key stakeholders in those areas. Using the asset tool you can reach key emergency services workers in a targeted and sophisticated manner. You can also use OCA to quickly identify assets and people within a geographical area, or mark-up an incident map for sharing with other stakeholders.
Track decision making	Emergency services are often under pressure following major incidents in terms of how they planned for and responded to major hazards. Royal Commissions are a common instrument to examine what happened and why decisions were made by personnel in emergency services agencies in such a context. The OCA's configurable audit logging, decision matrix allows you track why decisions were made, and see what information was at hand. You can export all of the information in a major incident - logs, reports, any piece of information - at the touch of a button rather than spending weeks or months pulling together reports, giving you a rapid and cost efficient understanding of what happened, when.
Security	It's important to have the confidence that the information and data you rely on is authentic and tamper proof, particularly if you end up facing a Royal Commission. OCA Incident Manager is the only incident management product in the world to be certified by the Defence Signals Directorate, to the internationally recognised Common Criteria EAL2+ security rating - (ISO/IEC 15408). The OCA's multi-node cloud software offering is hosted by Fujitsu, with data centres that meet the stringent ASIO T4 and ISO27001 standards. You can also host the application yourself, and we have experience in setting up hardware in classified environments. Key staff also have clearance to the appropriate levels. If security of data matters to you, then you can't do better than OCA.
Conform with AIMS, ICS or other standards	The Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS) is a common framework in Australian emergency services , providing a role based structure for responding to incidents. OCA can assist you in conforming with AIIMS or any other standard or methodology. Users of the system can be put in single or multiple roles. Roles can be configured into teams, or to match any structure. With OCA's highly configurable dashboards, information within the system can be set up to give roles different views of that information. Senior personnel may only have access to information at a high level where they need to make high level decisions. Those at an operational level may see more detail and use the information in the system in a more tactical context.
Integrated alerting	The OCA alerting platform is totally integrated in OCA. Throughout OCA, you can send information via the OCA Communication gateway via email, SMS, fax, voice and XML - conforming with the CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) standard. Send out emergency warnings, co-ordinate evacuations, keep key stakeholders informed, and use the workflow tools to automate communications of emergency plans or operating procedures. You can also send messages from a single source to multiple media, including public websites, intranets, and social media tools.
Share information with emergency services agencies	Major emergencies typically involve multiple emergency services organisations across multiple jurisdictions, as well as interaction with other agencies. The OCA Connect solution for interoperability allows you to share any piece of information (events, assets, resources, contacts, reports etc) with other relevant stakeholders, providing rich information securely and in real time. OCA Connect is also a directory service that connects other agencies with each other in a highly intelligent and automated way. Plus you can share information between OCA or non-OCA systems via our open architecture.
Geospatial information & decision making	Geospatial software tools are commonly used to assist in emergency services planning, response and recovery functions. The OCA GIS capability goes across the entire OCA system, utilising Google Maps. All pieces of information can be automatically geo-coded. Assets and resources can be plotted. Incidents, sub incidents, logs, reports can also be plotted. Communications can be sent using the Geospatial tools. The OCA capability is designed to complement specialist GIS tools, and can be used to integrate and complement the GIS work that has been done by a mapping unit. OCA integrates with GeoRSS, KML, CAP and ESRI among other mapping standards and systems.