Emergency Management Victoria, along with Ambulance Victoria, ESTA, CFA and VICSES have been collaborating on the development of a new Supplementary Alerting Service (SAS) app.
Since 2006, career and volunteer emergency personnel within the CFA, SES and Ambulance Victoria (AV) have been alerted about emergencies via the existing Emergency Alerting System (EAS). The one-way pager system is a vital part of the operational procedures of these organisations and is used to dispatch emergency services to incidents through text messages received on EAS personal paging devices.
The EAS has proven to be an extremely reliable system with good network coverage across Victoria and the ability to sustain a high level of service during peak events. With a network of 230 sites distributed throughout the state, it efficiently alerts emergency services personnel to critical incidents, as well as relaying important information to approximately 40,000 pagers in the field.
However, CFA has taken on feedback from users about the current system’s limitations and the suggestions of additional features that would improve its functionality. For example, allowing users to acknowledge messages could allow other members to quickly see who is attending an incident and how far away they are from the scene.
As the EAS cannot be upgraded to include any additional features, a Supplementary Alerting Service (SAS) will be rolled out through a web browser and smartphone app. The SAS will be dependent on commercial mobile networks and with many areas of Victoria currently without coverage, this won’t offer the same level of availability as EAS. The EAS network, however, has been built to mission-critical standards and will continue to operate in conditions where mobile networks may fail or operate inadequately.
Essentially, the upcoming SAS will be an optional, supplementary service only. The EAS network will continue to be the primary way of alerting staff and volunteers throughout the state of Victoria and operational members will still be expected to wear and use their pagers, even if they chose to use the SAS.
A set of high-level requirements for the SAS app have been developed through the feedback of users of the current EAS service, including results from an online survey that ran in July 2018. Overall, an overwhelming majority of those that responded to the survey think that the SAS is an important, beneficial and long overdue project.
Once available, the Supplementary Alert System looks to be a valuable addition to the CFA, SES, and AV organisations and will provide a mechanism to acknowledge messages and track team availability, as well as provide an array of other features designed to simplify the work of both career and volunteer staff Victoria wide.
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