There are many complexities that arise from managing simultaneous and in some cases diverse emergencies in a single jurisdiction.  By way of example, in Western Australia it is not uncommon to be managing a response to a cyclone event in the north of the state whilst at the same time experiencing major bushfire in the south.

Having access to real time information in relation to the location and availability of personnel and their equipment across all Emergency Services throughout the jurisdiction is critical for providing a coordinated response to all fire and natural hazard events across the largest state in Australia.

One of the measures recently implemented by Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) in Western Australia was the development of  ‘State Wide Resource Disposition Boards’ capable of displaying the availability of resources for all response services and resources managed by partner agencies. 

This presentation focuses on the development, implementation and utilisation of systems that consistently record and update personnel and resource data to allow the use of incident management tools in the WA State Operations Centre and associated Regional Operation Centres.  This system has proven effective in the real time management of Emergency events and has also provided a single source of truth for service information and response activity (thus providing consistent and comparable incident reporting across all Emergency Services in Western Australia).

The presentation will explore how DFES has adapted its systems and processes to manage the collation of information from disparate data sources; how it has established a standardised incident reporting framework and provide ‘warts and all’ insight into the challenges and benefits experienced?