Mobility solution supports bushfire recovery activities across multiple agencies and enables real-time consolidated reporting of recovery efforts
Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria Australia

Business Challenge
The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) is responsible for fire management on public land including National Parks, State Parks and State Forests.

Bushfire Recovery is about the recovery of water catchments, the restoration of assets on crown lands, and the rehabilitation of ecological and cultural heritage after bushfire events. It also aims to provide assistance to fire affected landholders, communities and businesses.

Recent experience in Victoria had highlighted the need to better coordinate bushfire suppression efforts with post-bushfire recovery initiatives.

The Bushfire Recovery process has always involved field data collection by multiple agencies in fire affected areas. This meant that different data capture methods and tools were being employed to undertake the same task. This had led to an inefficient recovery process as data collected was not centrally held and reporting on it was difficult.

The uncoordinated approach often resulted in multiple agencies asking traumatised landholders the same questions. It was clear that a better solution needed to be found.

Solution Overview
As a recognised leader in workforce management solutions, Geomatic Technologies (GT) was engaged by DSE to leverage VMAS (The Victorian Mapping and Address Service) and integrate it with GT FMC to view and report on assets after bushfire events. GT FMC is a simple to use, feature rich, enterprise level mobility solution that incorporates robust business rules for data input and validation.

Developed by GT, VMAS provides users with a clean, single authoritative address and property source via a single web service (XML) interface. VMAS also provides users with maps, images and other relevant spatial information.

The GT FMC solution was configured to enable field officers to extract and download maps from VMAS and load these onto a PDA to support field-based data collection activities. The solution allowed field officers to take photos of assets and to mark-up maps if required. Using GPS (Global Positioning System) field officers could also accurately locate assets in the field. Forms were configured to enable conventional fire assessments to be carried out.

The solution supported centralisation of data in near real-time and field officers were able to work quickly and capture data accurately despite having limited expertise in using mobile devices and mapping technologies.

The solution deployed covered the needs of multiple agencies so that data was captured once in the field to obtain a single operational view of recovery activities.

Outcomes
The GT FMC mobility solution deployed at DSE delivered the following outcomes:

• Centralised data management allowed for better reporting and analysis of bushfire recovery efforts.
• Duplication of data capture activities was avoided.
• GT FMC provided desktop mapping capability without relying on traditional GIS (Geographic Information System) technologies.

Images above from left to right
Bushfire damage assessments begin while suppression efforts are still ongoing. A mobile device with integral GPS used in field to capture fire damage assessments. A house destroyed by fire, Bushfire Recovery provides practical assistance to affected landholders.