SubscribeAtlas Incident Management System (AIMS) is a highly intuitive software system solution meeting the requirements of organisations that have a requirement need to effectively manage and coordinate their response during an emergency or crisis situation.
It AIMS provides an Incident Management System to aid the effective management of a local authority emergency control centres key functions in response to a major emergency incident. It is an affordable tool which can be used and implemented by all forms of local authority.
Cabinet Office Steering Group
In 2004 Leeds City Council received funding from the Cabinet Office to form a steering group to enable the development of an Incident Management package designed specifically to meet the needs of all types of local authorities
Initially a questionnaire was distributed to emergency planning units countrywide in January 2005. The main purposes of this questionnaire were to identify any systems currently in use, and secondly to identify the essential requirements needed to be incorporated into the new system.
The steering group consisted of representatives from emergency management units across the UK - the conclusion of the project was that the AIMS system from APL not only met these initial requirements, but in many areas far exceeded them, leading to its selection as the recommended system for emergency management.
Background
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has placed a statutory duty on Local Authorities and category 1 responders to "ensure that the organisation can perform its functions so as to reduce, control or mitigate the effects of an emergency".
AIMS is an essential tool in ensuring that the effective management of an organisations response and all actions taken are appropriately tasked and accurately recorded.
Currently many Local Authorities operate a 'manual incident logging system' requiring all communications, messages, management decisions and resulting actions to be recorded on a paper based system.
Not only is this time consuming but often confusing particularly if individuals are unsure of their particular role within the Emergency Control Centre. It is also easy to see how documentation containing important information or request for action required / completed can often be mislaid or overlooked in the intense and confusing atmosphere that surrounds an emergency situation.
It is also quite likely that the Incident Management Team may have difficulty in both accessing and filtering key information.
This can often be down to the number of call logs, or decision logs that may or may not be available to them, greatly affecting the management team's ability to make informed decisions and actions.
AIMS has been developed to provide a central management tool to support all levels of an integrated emergency management process:
- Coordinate the Local Authority emergency operations and management.
- Facilitate the effective assessment and evaluation of any on-going emergency situation.
- Generation of actions and tasks in response to an evolving emergency situation.
- Full access and availability to emergency plans and guidelines to cover a wide range of eventualities or contingencies that the authority may have to respond to.
- Complete chronological event / incident log. This will be used to collate all information generated during an incident. This will also be key to any subsequent review and de-brief post incident
- Effective development of the existing emergency management process in a training or exercise mode. This will ensure staff are familiar with their roles, responsibilities and management procedures of their departments when responding to an emergency situation.
The use of the AIMS integrated emergency management system allows a generic framework to be implemented to facilitate the response and coordination between different levels of management / departments within an organisation.
AIMS also provides the flexibility to prompt the appropriate level of response depending on the type of incident being managed: ensuring that departments are aware of their role in achieving a coordinated and successful response.
- Logging of all incoming calls to the emergency control centre.
- Allocation of "tasks" to individuals or departments.
- Logging of any actions taken in response to tasks received to provide an audit trail of all actions and decisions taken.
- Generation of SITREPS (situation reports) providing an overview of key incident information.
- Generation of multiple incidents - with appropriate filtering.
- Output of messages, tasks and SITREPS via email.
- Access to contacts database.
- Pre-defined auto-generated actions dependant on incident type.
- Access to on-line emergency plans.
- Extremely intuitive and easy to use.
- Configurable user interface / workgroups dependent on user role.
- Timers can be attached to tasks to prompt action.
- Incidents cannot be closed unless all tasks are completed.
- "Ticker tape" style scrolling messages broadcast to user screens for update of information.
The AIMS system provides a comprehensive solution helping to meet the requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, greatly improving the coordination, efficiency and effectiveness of Local Authorities during emergency situations.
AIMS - Atlas Incident Management System
Software for emergency management professionals
www.atlasops.com Phone +44(0) 1427 875711
Email: enquiries@atlasops.com
APL, PO BOX 740, DONCASTER, DN9 1WR, UNITED KINGDOM
