In a crisis scenario, there are four basic actions for an effective response: locating, tracking, observing, and sharing. The Civil Protection organizations that use FlagMii®EML achieve all these objectives with a single platform, which can support the software of the Operations Room but can also be used in smartworking and can support coordinators and technician even before their arrival on site, thanks to the cloud approach that grants access from any laptop and tablet.
FlagMii®EML is used by the Civil Protection Operations Rooms to speed up response times.
The ability to locate any smartphone, that of a citizen, a volunteer, or a technician, significantly improves the logistics of operations, while the "live video" functionality allows coordinators and support functions to have a first-person view of what is happening. Moreover, FlagMii®EML ensures great possibilities of data exchange and, above all, the convenience managing all activities wherever you are, even from mobile devices.
Locate, track, observe, share!
Locate!
Retrieving the exact location is the most important action to accurately identify the intervention area and to manage the logistics of the teams in action. Let us think of the case of a landslide, in which it is important to position the risk points on the map: with FlagMii®EML the exact position of the event is found easily via the smartphone of the person on site, who can be a technician but also a common citizen.
FlagMii®EML has outclassed the old app-based approach, in which location retrieval was only possible if a specific application was previously installed on the smartphone. Now, thanks to Emergency Mobile Link technology, a simple SMS is enough to find the coordinates of the person on the phone. This has allowed the Civil Protection Bodies to transform any citizen, with his / her smartphone, into a precious resource for reporting and for positioning events on the map tool which is included in the platform.
Track!
In Civil Protection scenarios, events are constantly evolving. The teams move repeatedly for monitoring actions and to carry out safeguard, securing and restoration operations. With FlagMii®EML, all the movements of the geolocalized smartphones are visible on the embedded map tool, thus offering an overview of the event management that is updated in real time. This function is used, for example, to check the coverage of the territory when searching for missing persons, since it allows to monitor accurately the areas that have already been patrolled, both on the map and on the satellite photos.
Observe!
The most used of FlagMii®EML functions is the possibility to receive live videos coming from an intervention area or from a crisis scenario. This tool is of huge importance during evaluation phases, as it is used by technicians to establish the extent of an event.
For example, geologists use FlagMii®EML to assess landslide fronts and risk factors, well before they arrive on site and even while they are still traveling. The video link is managed by the coordinator of the Operations Room, who demands a volunteer or an explorer to film the scene with their mobile phone; the video is then shared live with the geologist’s smartphone, who uses the volunteer’s device as a first-hand observation point for evaluation. The time savings obtained are crucial for the quality of the response to the event.
Live video is also used to guide the actions of volunteers in case they must carry out operations that they only partially know. The volunteer’s smartphone becomes the remote eye of the technician, who can describe to the operator the action to be taken and monitor their correctness. Also in this case, the reaction times are drastically reduced.
Introducing FlagMii®EML in Civil Protection contexts has created a new way of employing exploration patrols. Thanks to the Emergency Mobile Link, any rescue operator or Civil Protection volunteer can become an outpost of the Operations Room, simply by having a smartphone.
With a simple video recording from a mobile phone, anyone who is able to reach a crisis scenario first can offer a streaming video channel to the Operations Room, without the need to set up radio links and to equip specialized personnel with targeted devices. And everything is always accompanied by precise geographical coordinates.
Share!
In Civil Protection operations it is essential to integrate different technologies to create a single, coordinated, and coherent rescue machine. FlagMii®EML is a software solution that is easily connected to other platforms in use, such as digital operations logs (e.g., Unique Crisis) and mass alerting systems (e.g., nowtice®). Its integrated cartography is often used as a reference logistic map for coordination, since all the recorded information can be disseminated to other IT systems.
In a complex scenario with multiple Bodies interacting, FlagMii®EML is also used as a hub for the distributed management of activities.
