Protecting the community

This Oceania public safety organisation provides policing and emergency management services to the community. It is equipped to provide emergency response services for severe storms and floods, road crash rescue and a range of other general rescue and community support roles through volunteers.

Mission critical is an overused phrase. However, it seems appropriate when describing the work of this Oceanian state’s emergency services. Coordinating the response of the state’s police, fire, emergency services and ambulance services can be a matter of life or death.

This state wants its emergency response to be quick, efficient and connected. Having separate, ageing Computer Aided Dispatch systems was not ideal. “We had four emergency service organisations with four different systems,” says a representative at the Oceania public safety organisation. “There was an obvious opportunity to integrate call-taking and dispatch.”

The business case centred on stripping out duplication of effort and cost savings. At an operational level the impact was more stark: this organisation could be faster to have response teams on site, and those teams would be equipped with the most up-to-date information. “It’s about getting the right resources to the right place at the right time,” says the representative.

The Fujitsu Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) is the first all-agency system in Oceania covering all emergency services. It allows for real-time sharing of incident details, resource location, hazards and warnings as well as status tracking between police, fire, state emergency services and ambulance agencies.

Fujitsu delivers the CAD system alongside configuration, customisation, interface development, training materials and ongoing support and maintenance services. The first agency to go live was the police, the largest and busiest of the services. The fire service was then brought onboard, followed by the ambulance service. Implementation had to work around the bushfire seasons.

“We had a good set of project principles at the start. But the important thing was the partnership with Fujitsu. When you select a technology provider, it’s not just about the technology, it’s the people,” says the representative. “Throughout, we dealt with Fujitsu teams in Oceania. That was important to us. We didn’t want to be working around US or European time zones.”

CAD significantly improves response times and the accuracy of critical incident information. Managing emergency calls and dispatch through a common system helps coordinate emergency response and eliminates a number of manual processes. With data at their fingertips, emergency teams now work off consistent information.

The representative says it has improved communication between teams. Information is more certain, there are fewer human errors and response management has a clearer view of available resources. “It’s a lot easier to identify the nearest or most appropriate resource. We’re also able to track teams and vehicles. For instance, we can let teams onsite know the ETA of an ambulance. In comparison, the old system was like flying blind.”

Post event, it is easier to examine data to identify possible improvements. There is a consistent pool of event data capable of being shared among agencies. “The most pleasing aspect is that we have established a system that makes it easier for our emergency responders to do their jobs,” says the representative. “The better able they are to do their job, the more lives we’ll save.”