April 2023

[originally published on Juvare.com; written by Colin Garrison]

The Brisbane City Council in Australia was dissatisfied with the software platform it was using to manage disasters. By switching to Juvare WebEOC 9, the Council gained a system with robust incident management capability that was easy to learn and use and allowed staff to quickly make enhancements to the platform themselves rather waiting months for changes to be made by the developer.

Implementing Juvare WebEOC reduced the Council’s training burden and strengthened the city’s overall disaster response capability.

A Global City With a Challenging Rainy Season

At a population of 2.5 million, Brisbane is the third-largest city in Australia and the capital of Queensland state. Within greater Brisbane, the jurisdiction the City of Brisbane is home to 1.2 million people. It is governed by the Brisbane City Council (BCC), the largest local government in the country by both area and population.

A beautiful, global city on Australia’s east coast, Brisbane is a thriving metropolis with a diverse economy. State government offices, corporate headquarters, medical and biotech research, healthcare, universities, important cultural institutions, and tourism all contribute to the city’s economic fabric. Set astride the banks of the Brisbane River, the city has a subtropical climate and an abundance of parks and is known for its relaxed, outdoor-oriented lifestyle.

Brisbane is frequently chosen as the site of major international events. It has hosted the Commonwealth Games, World Expo, Goodwill Games, and the G20 summit. In 2032, it will be home to the Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

From the disaster management perspective, Brisbane faces unique challenges. Along with the risks common to any large city, it must contend with a brushfire threat, the possibility of tsunamis, and an intense annual rainy season. Lasting from November to March, the rainy period brings frequent thunderstorms and can also batter the city with destructive hail, damaging winds, torrential rain, and heavy flooding. Brisbane sits on the southern edge of the tropical cyclone risk zone.

Discovering the Limits of a Rigid Disaster Management System

The disaster management platform the BCC had been using for years was proving not up to the job.

In early 2022, Brisbane experienced some of the worst flooding in its history, but the software system it used for managing such incidents was of little help.

“That previous system was very rigid as well as being opaque,” says Reece, a technology expert on staff at the BCC (he asked that his surname not be used because he also works in security and defense). “Unless you knew the system well you would struggle to use it. It was very unforgiving.”

The platform was so complicated, the people using it to respond to the flood were unable to pick it up in the time available.

“They ended up switching to email and spreadsheets,” says Sarah Keally, a Juvare client success manager in Australia who works with the Council.

The system had another serious flaw: lack of flexibility.

“Their existing system was limited in capabilities, and making changes required a developer to implement them, making the maintenance and updates a quite expensive and time-consuming endeavor,” Keally recalls.

“The disaster space moves quickly,” adds Reece. “We needed something that would keep up.”

As a result of these and other experiences, the Council decided to shop around for a new disaster management platform.

Seeking a New, User-friendly Disaster Management Platform

After the rainy season ended, the BCC issued a request for tender for a new Brisbane Disaster Management System (BDMS), including licensing, cloud hosting, implementation, and support services.

The Council wanted a system that had a lot of capabilities out of the box, including resource management and mapping capabilities, and which was flexible enough so BCC staff could make updates to workflows and processes themselves, without intervention from the software provider.

“We also wanted something that could scale up or down from a clear-sky day to the worst that Brisbane face,” says Reece.

After considering a number of candidates, the Council decided to make Juvare WebEOC 9 the new Brisbane Disaster Management System.

Implementing Juvare WebEOC

The Council received its new platform in short order.

“Juvare was able to build and implement a brand new BDMS in two months from contract signature to go-live,” says Keally.

The features and capabilities of Brisbane’s new disaster management system included: Juvare WebEOC Professional, Juvare Login Services (provides single sign-in capability), an ArcGIS extension providing enhanced mapping functionality, WebEOC Board Data Manager for importing and exporting data, WebEOC Dashboard tool, a mobile app, and other solutions.

One feature the Council was particularly pleased about was Juvare DesignStudio. DesignStudio’s plug-and-play WYSIWYG functionality lets users build out and update their own display boards, allowing them to customize the platform independently.

After working with Juvare staff to learn how to administer the new platform, the BCC used DesignStudio to customize or create new boards for use in managing evacuations, communicating with the public, and distributing and restocking sandbags, a matter of high public interest in flood-prone Brisbane.

The new system gave the Council the ability track staffing levels and rostering, task requests, and resource requests and deployments and also to produce reports, dashboards, and maps for incidents and events they’re managing.

Putting WebEOC to the Test

Fortunately, the first rainy season after the BCC implemented the Juvare WebEOC­–based BDMS was comparatively mild. However, the Council has still had opportunities to gauge the effectiveness of the new platform.

The BCC trained hundreds of people to use the new system in the runup to storm season and held a major disaster exercise late in 2022 involving a heavy flood scenario.

The experience in both cases was strongly positive.

“We’ve had universal feedback that the WebEOC was significantly easier to use than anything we used in the past,” says Reece. “We trained 400 staff in less than two weeks. We were only able to do that because it’s such an easy system to convey.”

The trainees said they liked the fact information on damage assessments, evacuation centers, and task requests was all in a central place.

“You don’t have to adjust to Juvare,” says Reece. “Juvare adjusts to the user.”

The disaster exercise was attended by 50 Council staff and Lord Mayor Adrian Schinner, the City of Brisbane’s senior elected official, as well as Juvare representatives.

“The question we had was, will this work when push comes to shove,” says Reece. “It came out as a resounding yes.”

Increasing the City’s Resilience and Looking Ahead

Currently, Council staff are exploring additional changes they might make to extend the functionality of the new platform. These include implementing Alerts Pro so they can send out voice and text messages, incorporating the use of electronic time sheets, and establishing a connection with the Queensland police through Juvare Exchange.

The Council is also interested in creating a board for managing volunteers that will help in assigning people to training or jobs and notifying them of when and where to report.

With challenging weather a regular part of life in Brisbane, and a couple of high-profile international events on the horizon, the Brisbane City Council is satisfied with its decision to implement Juvare WebEOC as the new Brisbane Disaster Management System.

In switching to Juvare WebEOC 9, it has gained a robust incident management system that is easy to learn and use, includes strong mapping and dashboard capability, and allows BCC staff to make enhancements themselves rather than waiting for changes to be made by the developer.

 “WebEOC has substantially reduced our training burden and increased our overall response capability,” says Reece.