Red Cross has found that electronic tablets offer significant efficiency and effectiveness gains in coordinating door-to-door emergency service activities and streamlining data capture and management.

Traditional Red Cross field operations have been based on the use of hard copy maps and briefings with paper forms used to record relief and recovery information. While a reliable approach, door-to-door visitation rates were limited by data recording timeframes, the reliable identification of properties was difficult and the high level of data transcribing was inefficient and added accuracy risks.

Through 2014, Red Cross trialled the use of tablets for post-fire relief and recovery efforts in Tasmania, NSW and South Australia. These trials utilised the Fulcrum application, a user-customisable tablet and smart phone solution already proven by American Red Cross for post disaster operations.

Benefits observed in the trials included:

• Simpler briefings, including the ability to specify individual properties for visitation
• Easier and consistent recording of property locations, using the GPS capability to auto record property coordinates
• Simpler data recording in the field, with user-designed forms allowing for check-button or multiple-choice recording with integral data-validation. The proportion of resource-intensive, user-composed records is subsequently also reduced
• Live Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) monitoring of field crew locations reducing work health and safety risks
• Direct downloading of recorded data from the field into EOC information management systems
• A significantly improved deployment experience for field personnel; particularly important when dealing with volunteer workforces.

While initiated to support relief and recovery operations, this approach would also appear to be highly relevant for pre-event defendability mapping. For example, it would enable rural fire brigades to easily map and upload the status of individual properties in their area, with that information then accessible to planning and operations to guide the allocation of resources during a fire response.