ENHANCING DISASTER COMMUNICATION: CREATING A CULTURE OF CONNECTIVITY

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

The San Bernardino County Fire, Office of Emergency Services (OES) has developed an innovative and collaborative internet-based disaster communication platform that provides Situational Awareness (SA) and a Common Operating Picture (COP) throughout all stakeholder groups from the local level to the State and Federal reporting systems. The San Bernardino County WebEOC Program only begins with a software product. This highly customized tool has become a model for disaster communication, built to meet California emergency management compliance standards for incident reporting. It seamlessly accommodates the gathering of incident information, providing a means to vet, display and disseminate critical intelligence, and provides the tools to coordinate an effective incident response to a successful recovery. The SBCo. WebEOC Program design, development, training, exercise, and real world testing during Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activations, has become synonymous with cutting-edge emergency response and has transcended its foundational disaster applications to facilitate daily emergency management functions. Riding the wave of internet accessibility and innovation, WebEOC has quickly become San Bernardino County’s new “communication currency”. Through parallel collaboration with regional and state disaster response partners, it has established a statewide template for a “culture of connectivity”, linking WebEOC programs at all levels of government.