i- INFO.EPR offers complete lifecycle emergency management functions for planning, preparedness, response support and recovery. i- INFO.EPR complements Crisis Information Management Software (CIMS) systems. These systems track minute-by-minute ad hoc emergency situations at the local level.
i- INFO.EPR and CIMS have different functionality and play different roles during an emergency. Users who have CIMS can enhance their functionality by linking to our system to incorporate the power of references, emergency contacts, emergency plan documents, and building egress documents that are not typically maintained on a daily basis in CIMS systems. During a crisis event, there is not time to search for and enter emergency contact records, person skills/certifications, available shared equipment, mutual aid agreements, shelters/facilities/hospital statuses, hazard definitions, building drawings/specs or emergency plans/checklists. i- INFO.EPR maintains this critical information for immediate use by Emergency Operation Centers, emergency responders, emergency facilities/hospitals, utility companies, Tier I & II facilities and others.
Additionally, the asset records listing bridges, streets, water treatment facilities, airports and other key infrastructure components managed by Public Works, Water Services, Parks and Aviation, as well as these departments’ active projects and recovery projects can be managed using this system as well. Not only does this allow critical information to be accessible by EOCs, but eases coordination during recovery projects.
In our current region-wide deployment efforts, non-government organizations such as utility companies and Tier I & II facilities have expressed the need to manage their information using i-INFO. They not only want to support the first responders, but see the benefits of offsite information access from a business continuity and disaster recovery perspective. Again, the value of i-INFO.EPR will grow exponentially as more and more cities, businesses and utilities get their critical emergency information on-line.
There are several system components, which are critical in enabling the i-INFO.EPR application suite the ability to truly offer a regional, state or nation-wide solution:
- Inter-Agency Collaboration & Sharing – Allows the inherently designed ability to have data from multiple agencies in one system, and allowing the owner of the information to control the security and sharing of that information.
- Document & Media Center – Provides robust capability for the storage, retrieval, check-in, check-out, viewing, versioning and release of documents. Viewer handles over 250 file formats, allowing zoom, 3D rotation and redline markup of maps, building drawings and other files.
- Automated Personnel Info Center – Enables each person to update their own person record, including address, phone, email, wireless, skills, education, certifications, emergency contacts, secured medical, and other information that must be current during an emergency event. The system automatically sends out an email, with a form to update information, to each user based upon their automated profile (can select every 30, 60, 90, 120 days). Offers ability to setup predefined communication groups that are needed to send emergency messages/alerts to appropriate people (email and/or wireless) quickly and easily.
The i-INFO.EPR applications can be divided into four (4) main sections: planning, preparedness, response support and recovery.
Planning
- Master / Fund Planning: Provides ability to manage fund pool amounts, from internal, private and state/federal sources. Has ability to attach funding application documents and communications, as well as tracking important application and reporting deadline dates so no fund opportunities or filing requirements are missed.
- Asset Management: Provides the ability for each public or private agency to enter, manage and report on the lifecycle information related to their emergency assets, facilities and equipment. Tracks asset conditions and remaining life information supporting asset update or replacement.
Preparedness
- Standards Library: Provides indexing and classification functionality to describe document features and content enabling individuals or planning committees to easily find and view related documents (including plans, procedures, protocols, training materials, etc.) from other cities, modify/create their own plans, track feedback from committee members on-line, track different document versions and approved plans. Also, includes library of value-added web-based emergency reference information (e.g. weather, FEMA, FBI, CDC…) by providing quick access to critical resources, using pre-approved web links.
- Mutual Aid Agreements: Allows the creation and management of mutual aid agreements, including tracking and reporting on the work in process status of participating agencies. The system correlates the shared assets from every involved agency with the appropriate mutual aid documentation. As modified, owner updates of asset features, condition and availability are reflected immediately to emergency responders.
- Project / Committee Coordination: Offers ability to manage the planning and collaboration on projects of multiple committees, improving the effectiveness of developing and updating preparedness and response information. This is effective for private organizations and others in developing business continuity plans and sharing those plans in advance with local first responders. All communications, collaborative documents and milestone dates can be tracked for projects involving the development of emergency plans, checklists and how-to instructions.
- Regional Standard Equipment: Allows the creation of pre-approved equipment and asset libraries to support the purchase of regionally standardized equipment. The system further provides the ability to attach supporting documentation such as evaluation criteria and ratings, detailed descriptions, photos, diagrams and specifications. From these approved standards, each agency can better plan and select the appropriate equipment to support regionalism.
- Hazards Definition: Allows public or private sector organizations the ability to define and document hazards data, forms, documents, continuity plans, critical drawings and related information. This reduces the information management and update time by regional hazards coordinators and, during response, provides immediate availability of accurate information by first responders to review, plan and speed the safe access and egress by on-scene personnel.
- Incident Preparedness: Allows incident planners and planning groups to create their own template, per type of incident, or view other similar incident templates shared with them from other agencies. This pre-planning process enables the distribution of incident specific information to meet the needs of the responder.
Response Support
- Resource Knowledgebase for CIMS Systems: Allows EOC commanders to access i-INFO.EPR knowledgebase of information, described in the planning, preparedness phases.
- Aggregate Data from Disparate CIMS Systems: Allows ability, through EAI technology to automatically upload/download critical incident information from disparate CIMS systems, to provide visibility and decision support from regional, state and federal perspectives. If persons have their incident information in different CIMS systems, then they cannot have a regional, state or nation-wide view of all incidents per their given jurisdiction.
Recovery Support
- Assistance Request Functions: Provides a mechanism for documenting needs through the community resulting from the incident, organizes estimated damages and recovery costs and supports rollup reporting of those estimates by any state, county, city or district. This information supports community hearings by elected officials, as well as the regional submittal and tracking of state and national disaster relief funds for the community.
- Recovery Project Management: Provides application for defining and managing cross-organizational cleanup and reconstruction projects, allowing multi-jurisdictional activities from planning, funding, hearings, management and reporting to be accomplished faster. Standardized templates, developed during planning processes or on the fly, can be initiated to quickly setup new projects.
- After Action Reporting: Utilizes the system’s recording of key milestones from the multiple systems to automatically capture organizational and regional shared resource usage during an incident. This action / decision log will be used for the purpose of providing after-action reports to be submitted for incident reimbursement funds.
- Fund Reimbursement Management: Allows Fund Managers to track reimbursement funds, the fund filing deadline dates, communications to/from FEMA and/or other agencies, and related financial actions necessary for faster recovery after an incident.
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