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When Has Health and Safety Gone Too Far?

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This is a tough one to answer due to two reasons. The first being that every organization, region and country has different regulations. The second being that from day one, us responders are taught about scene safety and 'you first, your team second and victims third'. This may not be a popular subject to discuss though leave your views in the comment section down below to help contribute to the debate. 


While I don't think it's fair to judge particular cases, people and organizations - two separate incidents, in two different countries gave me the motivation for this blog post. The first one was when two paramedics in Ireland refused to go down a jetty and get onto a large boat that was alongside the pontoon in order to treat a man who was having seizures. When offered lifejackets by the family, they refused citing 'health & safety'. The second was when two paramedics in the United Kingdom refused to go down a small embankment to help a man who had gone into cardiac arrest after a head injury from a car accident. 

The coroner involved in the second case said;

"I will not say what I think of health and safety regulations. I was brought up in a country where men risked their lives to save the lives of others."

While I think we all believe in what the coroner said, the reality of this is emergency responders being 'left out to dry' or being reprimanded. An example of an emergency responder getting 'left out to dry' is when a police officer was told 'lifesaving is not part of his job'

What are your views on health & safety regulations? Have they gone too far and do you have any experience you could share with us? Leave your comments down below.

Written by Adam Scott, EMT & SAR Responder. 

Discover a better way to manage your response team to save time for the more important things.


Podcast Episode 36 - Interviews with Voluntary Irish Responders.

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Pop on the kettle, take off the PPE, Recharge your SCBA Cylinder, throw the BSI gloves in the medical bin and sit back and enjoy the premier emergency response chat. 


Adam interviews Conor Barry from Wexford Marine Watch. WMW provide visible patrols on the city's bridge to help stop suicides. Adam also interviews Greg Lyons from the Irish Red Cross Dublin Unit and tells us about what his unit gets up to.

Bravado and Decision Making

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Bravado by definition “Vaunted display of courage or self-confidence. A pretence of courage; a false show of bravery. A disposition toward showy defiance or false expressions of courage.”  is something you don’t want fuelling your decisions. 


A documentary entitled “The Mask You Live In” sparked the idea for this post. It focused on how young boys grow into men and how conditioning to be strong, silent, brave etc influences their development. The documentary argues that these influences differ from that of young girls, impacting greatly on males perception of risk. With statistics like “Compared to a girl the same age, a young boy is 7 times more likely to die by his own hand’. This documentary raises some huge questions.

It has implications for emergency response as situational awareness and decision making will impact heavily upon the outcome of a response. If males are more likely to be risk takers and emergency response is mostly male driven, is it safe to say responses are in danger of being driven by bravado rather than bravery. Is it time to call for more gender balance? 

What is the difference between bravado and bravery? Bravery being a humble and honourable display of courage. Bravado seeking prestige with swaggering display of courage.

Some ways a responder overcome with bravado may disregard signs of danger:

  • Being narrowly focused on performing a heroic task missing critical cues.
  • Seeing critical cues and with conscious awareness choosing to ignore them.
  • Believing the critical cues are not as bad as they appear.

Responders must put strategies and training in place to hold people accountable if bravado puts others at risk.

To learn more about what we do at [D4H] download an information pack here.
Marc Healy - [D4H] Emergency Response Team Software Crew

Getting the most from [D4H] - Knowing About Tags.

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Getting the most from your Decisions [D4H] account means knowing every part and how to use it to it's maximum advantage for your response organization. In this post we look at how to get the most out of your 'Bundles' and 'Tags'. 


Using 'Bundles' and 'Tags' in [D4H] allows your organization to collect the metrics it requires in order to meet its organizational aims and objectives. A single 'Bundle'' will sit above many 'Tags' as the picture below shows. 


Your 'Bundles' should be based on a description that would encompass specific skill sets under that heading as per the picture above. They may be anything that your organization wishes to collect data on. Tags are available right throughout [D4H]. For example  below you can see a upper level report based on a members 'Tags' on activitys. 


Individual 'Tags' can also be further drilled down into in order to achieve the results your organization is looking for to improve your members training. 


'Tags' can also be viewed to see what activities they were used on and in relation to member frequency of that tag and what othe

Situational Awareness for Emergency Responders.

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We've all heard the stories, seen the pictures and recoiled at the videos of fellow responders getting situational awareness wrong. Situational awareness is a term that is bandied around quite a lot these days. The more people seem to quote it the less they seem to know about it in a practical way. I'm going to take Endsley's Model of Situation Awareness, strip it back and give you the information that you should be thinking about when approaching the scene or operating in it. 


1. State of the Environment 

Look around you and look at the 'Facts on the ground'. Be aware that even though experience of prior & similar situations may be useful remember that every situation is different and don't get complacent. 

2. Perception of Elements in Current Situation 

Check to see the major factors of the situation you are dealing with. Be aware that what you suspect/percieve may infact not be correct. Challenge your perspective at all times. Don't just put the head down and get to work, break away from the tunnel vision and challenge what you think you are dealing with. 

3. Comprehension of Current Situation

Do you actually understand what is going on in this response. Are you sure? Is that a crash with smoke billowing out of the truck or is it Ammonia Gas? 


4. Projection of Future Status

Is the scene's status suddenly going to change


After you have have weighed up all these points you must make your decisions and most importantly act. Constantly review your performance and then re-weigh up the situation going through points 1-4 in sequence. This will always ensure that you are in the best possible frame for being situationally aware. 

Written by Adam Scott, EMT & SAR Responder. 

Discover a better way to manage your response team  to save time for the more important things. 

Announcing: Custom Incident Timestamps

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When something goes wrong, time is always critical. Quickly getting from Alerted to In-Attendance can make all the difference in human, property, and financial loss for emergency services, production lines, transport incidents, and other corporate crisis response teams. Today we're announcing custom incident time-stamps allowing you to design your own team performance metrics.


Incident Types Can Be Recorded Differently
Our roots were in the emergency services, but we've come a long way from there - we now manage incidents dealing with commercial, financial, property, and industrial loss - not just human loss. While we work hard to make the product more customisable for everyone, we've worked closely with a pharmaceutical lab this time, to build customisable timestamps.

It doesn't matter if you're going to a chemical spill or a train derailment - you're now able to set up templates of timestamps for the multiple different types.

Outside of Durations
You can now choose the the duration timer start and finish. This means you can record timestamps before the start date, such as the actual time the incident occurred, or the time you were pre-tasked without affecting your incident duration. In the same way, you can have timestamps after the incident duration has finished. This might be things like cleaning or restocking equipment.


Drag & Drop Editor
We've designed a top-notch drag & drop editor for you to arrange your timestamp orders, enable/disable timestamps, and choose the duration start & end. This is only accessible to account owners. You can't delete old timestamps, only disable them.



Go Blank - No Mandatory Fields
Previously when you added an incident, you had to have a time for every field. We've removed this requirement to allow you wait for more information later. You can now leave all fields (except duration start & finish) as blank. Maybe you didn't do the item, or just don't have the information.

     


iOS Compatible Charts
We've updated all the distribution and duration charts to be iOS compatible. Flash is gone, and the charts look nicer, and load faster. How long does it take you to get from alerted to mobile on average anyway?


Organizations
Multiple teams connected together by a parent organization can have the same timestamps controlled centrally. This ensures that everyone is recording the same data so it may be analyzed against each other.

How Do I Configure
This feature will be live on all production servers by Friday August 8th. If you're the account owner, just take a look in [Team Settings] -> [Custom Fields] -> [Incident Timestamps] to get started.

Spartanburg Regional HERT - A solid collaborative communication platform.

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[D4H] was rolled out to Spartanburg Regional HERT. Spartanburg Regional in South Carolina is the first hospital in the nation to develop a comprehensive HERT (Hospital Emergency Response Team). [D4H] revolutionized how they conducted their business and provided a solid collaborative communication platform.

Spartanburg Regional HERT - [D4H] revolutionized how we conducted our business and provided a solid collaborative communication platform.

[D4H] was rolled out to Spartanburg Regional HERT. Spartanburg Regional in South Carolina is the first hospital in the nation to develop a comprehensive HERT (Hospital Emergency Response Team). Spartanburg Regional is a level one trauma center, which provides the team with a unique operational footprint.

Spartanburg Regional HERT - [D4H] revolutionized how we conducted our business and provided a solid collaborative communication platform.

The Hospital Emergency Response Team (HERT) was developed after Spartanburg Regional mobilized assets and personnel to assist in the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) operations during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The team is a comprehensive and highly trained working body of clinical and non-clinical volunteers who support the health care operations in order to maintain the health care infrastructure during periods of catastrophic need for their patients as well as the local community.

Spartanburg Regional HERT - [D4H] revolutionized how we conducted our business and provided a solid collaborative communication platform.

Problem and Business Needs
HERT is made up of responders from multiple disciplines that support the various teams, they are truly volunteers that willingly donate their time to a greater cause. The fact that team members are spread out across multiple teams can make it difficult to find a person from among the team, to perform an everyday task such as a repair or inspection. Historically, the team has managed the inventory and assignments by way of pen, paper, spreadsheet, not effective use of the team's time and energies. There was no way to simply communicate with a team member that a repair or inspection must be completed by a certain date. There was also no simple way for the responder to mark the inspection or calibration as complete. Another problem was sharing incident reports with members who missed a call out.

Spartanburg Regional HERT - [D4H] revolutionized how we conducted our business and provided a solid collaborative communication platform.

The Solution
Now Spartanburg Regional HERT can assign a task to a particular member or post it at the Whiteboard for someone looking for a project. "[D4H] has revolutionized how we conducted our business as well as provided a solid collaborative communication platform that provides cutting edge technologies and effective outcomes." Jeff Straub - Emergency Manager / System Safety Officer - Spartanburg Healthcare System.

Announcing Mobile Beta and Welcoming John

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This week we welcomed John Brett to our [D4H] Software Engineering team in Dublin, Ireland. John moves to us from IBM, studied Computer Science NUI Maynooth, completed the Extreme Blue programme, and then a spent a number of years working on IBM web applications and components. He got stuck in straight away to our roadmap working on part of our 2013 game plan "First class experience on mobile & tablet devices". While we may eventually move to platform specific apps, our plans are to first build out this first class experience as a responsive design within the web app. This means, as your screen gets smaller we show you a different design.

We like to have new team members launching production code in their first week, and today John launches the new mobile menu, mobile dashboard, mobile off-call, mobile send SMS, and mobile whiteboard notes. This is just the start, once we've some feedback on how it performs (leave comments!) we'll begin to move the same interface across other pages such as viewing the calendar on a mobile.




How Do I Add To Homescreen?
We recommend pressing "Add To Homescreen" while on the Dashboard view on iPhone and iPad to bookmark it for quick access. If you tick "Remember Me" on sign-in you won't need to enter your password every time.


How do I try it out? 
Just open your D4H account in Safari on your mobile device, and use the Add To Home Screen option :-)


TITAN Salvage - [D4H] Ensures Equipment Is Available When Needed

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TITAN Salvage was tasked with the removal of one of the biggest wrecks in Europe to date. Using [D4H], TITAN Salvage now organizes all aspects of their equipment management in once place moving away from generic spreadsheet and word document systems.


Company Background

Equipment & Asset Management system was adopted by TITAN Salvage to improve the management of their salvage equipment and assets on one of their largest salvage projects to date. TITAN is a global leader in providing specialized solutions to complex maritime emergencies. Services include Salvage, Wreck Removal, Marine Disaster Response and Project Management, OPA 90 Compliance and Fuel Removal.


TITAN Salvage - [D4H] has increased compliance at TITAN by ensuring equipment is available when needed.

With offices and response depots in the UK, Florida, Singapore, Australia and agent offices in most port cities around the world, TITAN has an impressive global network of qualified salvage masters, engineers, naval architects, technical, operations and administrative personnel.

TITAN Salvage - [D4H] has increased compliance at TITAN by ensuring equipment is available when needed.

Problem and Business Needs

Knowing what equipment was available, where it was and if it was useable were the most important issues [D4H] needed to address for TITAN.

TITAN salvage was tasked with the removal of one of the biggest wreckages in Europe to date. The scale of the project meant that a huge amount of wreck removal equipment would need to be transported to the site of the wreckage, stored and managed.

The abundance of new wreck removal equipment created a need for a system to not only track availability and location but disposable supply levels, who was issued equipment as well as equipment life cycles.

From first contact with TITAN it was known time was of the essence. In less than a month the [D4H] crew was able to evaluate what TITAN needed, what their priorities were and roll out the Equipment & Asset Management system based on a strict set of priorities and key performance indicators created in partnership with TITAN.

TITAN Salvage - [D4H] has increased compliance at TITAN by ensuring equipment is available when needed.

The Solution

Using [D4H] TITAN can now organize all aspects of their equipment management in one place and move away from generic spreadsheet and word documents systems.

Allowing TITAN to assign equipment to locations and personnel creating additional accountability, track the lifespan of the equipment to ensure they are getting a good lifespan out of their salvage equipment can save both time and money going forward. With [D4H] TITAN has increased compliance by ensuring equipment is available when needed.

HAZMAT Scene Safety For The Non-HAZMAT Responder.

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This blog post deals with the 'Scene Safety' element for responders who are not HAZMAT trained. We also talk about a new HAZMAT Specialist course that is available online for responders worldwide to participate in. Enjoy. 


In our interview with HAZMAT Mike, he gave us 4 basic principles to follow as non-HAZMAT responders who may be presented with a HAZMAT situation. 

1. Approach the incident from the upwind position. Imagine the chemicals are a fire, approach with the smoke blowing the opposite direction to your approach. 

2. Protect yourself as much as possible using whatever your organization has such as gloves, goggles and respiratory protection when dealing with persons who are affected. 

3. Be aware of the 'Site Security'  such as taping off areas to keep other people out of the 'Hot Area'.  

4. Identify and report the chemical that has been released. 

HAZMAT Mike has also developed an online 'HAZMAT Material Specialist' course. This course is the highest certification for hazardous materials responders in the USA. This certification allows HAZMAT Teams to advance in various Federal Levels and would be of great benefit to responders worldwide. It is offered through www.madonna.edu   using the course code; OSH4180.

To find out more about 'Scene Safety For The Non-HAZMAT Responder' and the 'HAZMAT Material Specialist' course - Pop on the kettle, take off the PPE, Recharge your SCBA Cylinder, throw the BSI gloves in the medical bin and sit back and enjoy the premier emergency response chat. 

Written by Adam Scott, EMT & SAR Responder. 

Discover a better way to manage your response team  to save time for the more important things.

Announcing: [D4H] Lost Person Behavior Statistics Module

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This week we're announcing our new ISRID compatible lost person behavior statistics module. Create your own local missing person data records on environments, scenarios, population densities, terrain, and eco-region domains. Compatibility allows you to contribute your data to the International Search & Rescue Incident Database.

You can now create your own local missing person dataset based on environments, scenarios, population densities, terrain, and eco-region domains and we encourage you to contribute your data globally to the The International Search & Rescue Incident Database (ISRID).

Responding to an early preview Robert Koester said, “One of the biggest challenges of creating ISRID was the nearly complete lack of standardization of data from around the globe. Any data collection tool that standardizes the collection of tool will not only help research, but more importantly help the SAR planner and ultimately the missing subject."

Lost person behavior is the cornerstone of search and rescue efforts for somebody who is missing. Based upon a landmark study, Robert J. Koester's book is the definitive guide to solving the puzzle of where a lost person might be found. Nowhere else is it possible to learn about the latest subject categories, behavioral profiles, up to date statistics, suggested initial tasks, and specialized investigative questions. Whether the subject is underground, underwater, under collapsed rubble, on land or has fallen from the sky, this book delivers what search managers need.


The International Search & Rescue Incident Database (ISRID) as part of a USDA grant which allowed the collection and analysis of SAR statistics from around the world. Over 50,000 SAR incidents have already been collected. Data has been collected from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the USA.

Subject categories including fitness, experience, equipment and outcomes. Record mobility, total time lost, total search times, and find features. Georeference points for Initial Planning Points (IPP) and Find Locations with automatic distance and bearing calculations. 


To find this feature, once your account has been upgraded, visit [Team Settings] -> [Persons Involved Module] -> [Lost Person Behavior] to switch it on - it's off by default.

This feature will be live as an option on all accounts by the end of week. We'll update Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn  when the rollout to everybody is complete - subscribe/follow on those.

Don't have a [D4H] account for your team yet? 

Decisions [D4H] Tool for Teaching Emergency Management Priciples

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Decisions [D4H] is widely used by emergency management professionals. We are now extending [D4H] to lecturers in universities/colleges who lecture in Emergency Management or a similar subject. For free. Here we are going to show you 4 ways in which you can use [D4H] to assist in the teaching the  principles of emergency management to your class. 


Determining actions required from repair categorizations. 

We are all aware that equipment gets damaged and requires repair. Knowing if equipment is getting damaged due to natural deterioration, incorrect operation or being used as intended can infer many aspects that need to be reviewed. Using a pre-entered equipment cache, you can set an assignment for the students to categorize the reasons for repairs and then infer remedies such as retraining, new purchases to replace old equipment etc.


Simulating real life operational limitations to determine legality.

Employee's and tasking vehicles all have limitations in law on the amount of weight they can carry (with the exception of military personnel - but not vehicles). Knowing the weight restrictions of vehicles including it's contents is an important yet overlooked aspect of emergency management. Using a predefined equipment cache and information on local laws, the lecturer can task the students with determining if all the organizations vehicles are carrying below the maximum weight per vehicle. 


Financial grant forecasting.

Being able to generate reports based on grants is essential for emergency management professionals. Using a cache of equipment you can ask your students to generate reports on what previous funding was made available, and for what equipment,  so when further grants come up the student can make cases for new funds based on the status of the current stock of equipment. 


Qualification requirement planning.

You can simulate a scenario where persons have various qualification expiration dates and the organization has different requirements as well as persons who are required to have certain qualifications. These rules can be the basis of a task for students to plan future courses in order to meet operational readiness requirements. 


Those four tasks are just the tip of the iceberg in what you can do with [D4H]. Contact us to find out more. 

Improving Emergency Response - Thats why we created Decisions [D4H]

Written by Adam Scott - EMT & SAR Responder. 

[D4H] at SPE Offshore Europe Conference

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ABERDEEN, UK - [D4H] crew made the short trip across the Irish sea to visit the SPE Offshore Europe Conference this week.


Events like the SPE Offshore Europe Conference have become important points on our calendar at [D4H] as we have experienced rapid growth from industrial safety teams, on boarding Oil Sands operators, O&G services providers CKR and Ship Salvage company TITAN Salvage. SPE Offshore Europe is the leading global platform for companies operating in the Oil and Gas industry. The conference boasts 1500+ booths and over 50,000 attendees all under one very large roof.




There was a huge variety of technology on display, some of which wouldn’t look out of place in NASA headquarters. The subsea Remote Operated Vehicles ROV’s have to be some of the most impressive pieces of hardware at the conference. The ROV’s are a key tool for offshore operations mostly used for inspection and the repair of underwater pipelines and manifolds.


Offshore platforms and ships were also a large portion of the technology on display. The amount of engineering expertise, planning, design and funding that have gone into these structures is hard to comprehend. 

Improving safety for response teams is why we built [D4H] if you would like to try [D4H] for your response team email marc.healy@d4h.org 

Announcing: [D4H]™ Cost Recovery & Finance Module

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Larger incidents are using a Finance/Administration Section tasked with tracking incident related costs, personnel records, requisitions, and administering procurement contracts required by Logistics. Switch-on the [D4H] Costings Module and every person, role undertaken, vehicle, kind of equipment, item of equipment, consumable, and ancillary items can have an optional cost of use associated with them.


We've spent years perfecting our modules so they can be configured to record data in a compatible format to the Incident Command System. This week, we're announcing the final building block, 'Costing' tools for the 'Finance / Admin Section' of an incident. Once switched-on, every person, role undertaken, vehicle, kind of equipment, item of equipment, consumable, and ancillary items have an optional cost of use associated with them.

More and more larger incidents are using a Finance/Administration Section tasked with tracking incident related costs, personnel records, requisitions, and administering procurement contracts required by Logistics. They're usually broken up to include... 

  1. 'Procurement Unit' – handles financial matters related to vendor contracts. 
  2. 'Time Unit' – records time for incident personnel and hired equipment. 
  3. 'Cost Unit' – tracks costs, analyzes cost data, makes cost estimates, and recommends cost-saving measures.
  4. 'Compensation/Claims Unit' – handles claims for property damage, injuries, or fatalities at the incident.

These sections may also procure special equipment, contract with a vendor, or develop cost estimates for the activity. But as we all know, these things don't only happen on large scale incidents - daily activities, training exercises, and regular routine incidents have costs - and that's what we're here for.


You can decide depending on your organization to use the module for either "Cost Recovery" or "Mission Cost". If used for cost recovery, you would enter the amounts for which you will 'Bill' your customers or the public for each item for the activity or response. For example, you might have a set charge for each type of vehicle that attends.

If you decide to use it to work out the cost of the activity, you would enter the cost prices in the fields. This could be to pass on to your parent organization, county, state, or other financial body.

Once the module has been switched on, you'll find a new [Costings] module in the activity editor. This is the final step of adding an activity, and uses all your data from the previous tabs to build a report.


We'll list all members who attended, supplies consumed, equipment used, vehicles taken. All the items will list as unticked and will not be included in the costings until you select them. For example, you may want to only list certain staff rather than all staff, or you don't want to list all items of equipment, only vehicles or supplies. This gives you the flexibility to choose or you can click [Select All] on the top left of each section. Items can be costed at an hourly rate or once per activity. A combination of both allows you to be very flexible.


Supplies can be costed individually. We'll automatically pull in their cost per item, and multiply it by the number you used from your equipment cache while adding the activity. You may or may-not charge for some items, so we'll let you select those too or select all if appropriate. 


Of course, there's often other costs to a response or training exercise such as hiring equipment, rentals, food, water, and fuel. You're able to add all these items on to the end of the costing report to be included in your export.


We'll show you an overview on your activity report, in the currency configured for your account. This data is only visible to Member+ and above and can only be edited by an Editor. To view specific costs, download the PDF Report.


The PDF download gives you a document to submit or file with your report. The report is broken into the sub-sections Vehicles, Equipment, Supplies, Personnel, and Other costings. We've automatically calculated section subtotals and totals. You're able to edit this report at any draft stage until you publish the activity report which locks it with the rest of the activity.


Personnel Costs Billed By Hour or Per Activity

In Planning -> Members -> Bulk Member Costing, you can configure the cost of attendance of all members by both hourly and once-off rates. The default rate will be used where no other rate is available. An individual rate will override both cost by role and default cost.  You can also go directly to a members profile and update their cost on an individual basis.


Personnel Costs Billed By Role Undertaken By Hour or Per Activity

Taking a look in Intelligence -> Roles -> Update Details you'll find the ability to update the cost incurred when that role is undertaken by a member of your organization in attendance. For example, if a Forensics Officer, Chief, or Team Leader attend, you might bill a specific rate for that role. These roles can be billed Per Activity or Per Hour at your discretion. The cost per roles is overridden by an individual cost against a members name.


Equipment Cost By Kind or Individual Item

You can go into Logistics -> Equipment -> [Select Category] -> Bulk Costings and update the cost of each kind of equipment. For example, you might decide to bill per truck that attends regardless of the number of members in attendance. To do this, you'd go into your 'Vehicles' category and [Edit Kind Costs] which will list all your vehicles and the associated rates. 


Third-Party Billing / Cost Recovery 

If your organization uses a third party billing company or department, you can email your PDF of itemized costs for each activity to them. If you need a custom integration to automate the process you should contact customer success with your enquiry.

To Enable This Module

As an account owner, visit [Team Settings] -> [Modules] [Costings] and switch it on. Special thanks to John & David in our engineering crew for making this a really slick site-wide experience for everyone - your accounts have all been upgraded with this included for free. 

Interested In [D4H] For Your Organization?

Why not, download an information pack or call Toll Free USA & Canada 1.800.480.5103.

Managing Risk in Emergency Response - On Incident.

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This blog post deals with what what you should look for in regards to managing  risk (on incident) in emergency response. While we have taken some points from the podcast interview with Dan - you should listen to the podcast to get the full story. Pop on the kettle, take off the PPE, Recharge your SCBA Cylinder, throw the BSI gloves in the medical bin and sit back and enjoy the premier emergency response chat.


1) Risk management/assessment is best undertaken by looking at the training, experience & equipment of responders. It needs to be dynamic as not all incidents have the same level of the above. 

2) Know your response area - learn from past experiences and build on your vulnerability assessment. This will help shape your training & equipment purchases. This all assist's in being able to perform dynamic risk assessment.

3) Determining individual capability & skills - by documenting in easily recoverable methods.

4) Respond to the incident - not the public's perception of what they think you do. Follow your program and don't be swayed. 



Announcing: [D4H]™ Buildings & Rooms with Location Bookmarks

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We've added bookmarks for locations so you can document activities and incidents at different sites, buildings, floors, and rooms. It's not only buildings & rooms - why not create bookmarks for your most common towns, areas, car-parks, trail-heads or response zones?


This week we're announcing 'Location Bookmarks' so you can document activities and incidents at different sites, buildings, floors, and rooms. These nested lists mean your team can drill down to an accurate pre-defined location rather than selecting it on the map. This change allows us to expand into on-site incidents at on-site facilities where a satellite image typically isn't needed or isn't accurate enough to locate an incident. 

It's not only buildings & rooms either - why not create bookmarks for your most common towns, areas, car-parks, trail-heads or response zones? For example, if you respond to rivers, you could have a parent location 'Rivers' with no map marker, and each river name under it with a map marker that jumps the pin to a central point on the river - you can then adjust it manually for the actual location on the banks.


Each nested location can have an optional latitude, longitude, street address, and altitude defining it. Every time the location is selected from the drop-down we'll automatically fill in these details on your behalf. Each level you go, getting more accurate, you can redefine the marker on the map. Once you've selected a location, you can move the pin & update the address, but we'll still categorize it under that location.


As you can see above, our analytics tool will give you a visualization of the most common locations for incidents, exercises, and events broken-down into a nested chart. Quickly identify where you need to work on prevention or click into a location to list all incidents from that location on a map.


You'll find the configuration in [Team Settings] -> [Location Bookmarks]. Here you'll be able to set up the parents and sub-locations quickly. It's easy to edit and add locations with simple drop-downs and a map picker. Switch a location to inactive to remove it from the selection list. Location bookmarks with data in them cannot be deleted.


This is a free upgrade for all subscribers - we think you'll love it. You can discuss it hereNeed help configuring Location Bookmarks? Ask our customer success team to do it with you.

Are you using [D4H] yet? Download Information Pack.

Emergency Responders - Don't Read This Blog Post

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Why do we refuse instruction?? It’s endlessly frustrating when people do the opposite to your instructions. What is the psychology of reverse psychology? For instance why are you reading this article right now even though the title clearly told you not to. 


Remind your boss to review your incident report and it takes even longer or encourage a colleague not to take a job and they take it anyway. Why do we refuse instruction?? For the instructors, trainers and safety team leads amongst us I’m quickly going to explore the psychology of reverse psychology which boils down to three key principles.

1) Rebound: Don’t think of a white bear

The thought of that mischievous bear is probably flashing through your head at a rate of knots right now. When someone tells you not to think of something your mind has a sneaky way of bringing your every thought back to that very thing (white bear). This is an important consideration when planning the language you use when giving instruction. An instruction full of don’ts will only focus a persons mind on what not to do. Don’ts can quickly become counterproductive as we subconsciously monitor for failures. In the back of our minds, we’re keeping an eye out incase we stumble upon a white bear. Psychologist Daniel Wegner called it The Ironic Process Theory .

2) Reactance: Forbidden fruit is much sweeter

When someone gives you a direct instruction not to do something, it’s hard not feel your freedom is being threatened. People often reacted to this threat by attempting to regain control by doing the opposite to what has been instructed. As a person trying to instruct a group of responders toward being better responders, it’s important to consider not putting the counterproductive on a pedestal by making it the forbidden fruit. Studies have shown the more severe the instruction the more compelling the counter reaction.

3) Curiosity: I wonder why that is banned?

When a behaviour is forbidden it often spurs on the intrigue. Studies show that warning labels on violent video games and TV shows often increase interest. There are plenty examples of books becoming more popular after being banned, warning labels and bans all feed the question, what could be so bad? It’s your job as an instructor not to feed this curiosity. Just like the title of this blog made you want to look, don't make your responders want to disobey you by making something a 'treasure chest' they must investigate.

The impact of the three principles can be avoided through giving instruction with a more in depth explanation. Providing an explanation to justify an instruction not only quenches the curiosity it also demonstrates a level of respect to the people being trained. Not to provide an explanation can indicate you don’t trust, respect or think your responders are smart enough to understand.

Finally DON'T CLICK THIS LINK 

Marc Healy - Head of International Business Development & Marketing

Announcing: [D4H]™ Automatic Weather Forecasts & Dashboard Alerts

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This week we're announcing automatic weather forecasts, historical look-ups, and severe weather alerts for your incidents, training exercises, and events. We've integrated a weather data API that does a lot of the hard work, so you don't have to.


Earlier this week we announced location bookmarks last week we announced cost recovery & finance and we're not stopping. This week we're announcing automatic weather data for forecasts, historical look-ups, and severe alerts. We've integrated the forecast.io weather data API that does a lot of the hard work, so you don't have to.

Auto-Complete Weather on Incident Report

We've been working closely with a pharmaceutical company to adapt [D4H] to be a closer fit for industrial safety settings. In these situations, incidents are often indoors and it's rare to have weather related data. But sometimes, an incident can be outside on the site, and the weather has an impact.

While teams who always work in the outdoors may need complex configurations of exact weather on-scene with snow & avalanche data, most others need just simple conditions, wind direction & strength, and temperature for the time in the area. We've added an [Auto-Complete Weather] button to all incident edit forms, that will automatically look-up the weather at the time and location it happened and fill it into your report.

Why's this important? It's important because we strive to help you always record the best data you can - and this feature achieves that by adding extra information you normally wouldn't have looked-up. What was the apparent 'feels like' temperature with wind-chill, what air pressure was it, and cloud cover. We love making these improvements for you.


Automatic Forecasts For Upcoming Activities

While working on the above, we thought we could get a great quick-win by implementing a long-wanted feature - weather forecast data. From a week out, we now check the forecast for you on the start time of activities scheduled on your calendar at the latitude & longitude where you dropped your location pin. 

From 7 to 3 days before the activity we'll refresh the forecast every 12 hours, from 3 days to 24 hours before the activity we'll update it every 6 hours, and the within 24 hours we'll check the weather every hour.

This data gets included beside each activity on your dashboard calendar. Information includes temperature and icons for Clear Day, Clear Night, Cloudy, Fog, Partly Cloudy Day, Partly Cloudy Night, Rain, Sleet, Snow, and Wind.


We've also put the icon on the activity header itself. We only update the weather once an hour, so new activities may take a small wait to process but they will appear. Also remember that it's the weather at the start of your activity, a single symbol may not reflect the weather at the end, especially if multi-day in duration.


While we were at it, we've also redesigned the month calendar view in [Planning] -> [Calendar] for a far nicer look & feel. Multi-day activities now span across the days and Of course, we've added the weather icons there too.


It wouldn't be a proper weekly briefing email without some weather data - so we've also added it to the weekly briefing emailers. We send tens of thousands of these emails a month, so it's fantastic to make them even more relevant for you.


Of course, anywhere we list the weather - you can also click it to open the Forecast.io details for the day. They've a fantastic timeline slider, map with rain radar, and other innovative weather.


Severe Weather Alerts

We were also able to get some government weather alert data from Forecast.io and we load those messages into your whiteboard for you. They'll clear automatically once the alert expires, and you can click through from them to the official alert from NOAA or other agencies. Weather alerts use the latitude & longitude of your base as the look-up location.




Weather Data-Sources

The Forecast.io hyperlocal precipitation forecasting system and severe weather alerts are calculated using the following data-sources. We understand they've more coming soon, which will become automatically included in the data we provide to you.

  • Radar data from the USA NOAA’s NEXRAD system (USA) and the UK Met Office’s NIMROD system (UK, Ireland).
  • The USA NOAA’s LAMP system (USA).
  • The UK Met Office’s Datapoint API (UK).
  • The Norwegian Meteorological Institute’s meteorological forecast API (Global).
  • The USA NOAA’s Global Forecast System (Global).
  • The USA NOAA’s Integrated Surface Database (Global).
  • The USA NOAA’s Public Alert system (USA).
  • The UK Met Office’s Severe Weather Warning system (UK).
  • Environment Canada’s Canadian Meteorological Center ensemble model (Global).
  • The US Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Ensemble Forecast System (Global).
  • The USA NOAA and Environment Canada’s North American Ensemble Forecast System (Global).
  • The USA NOAA’s North American Mesoscale Model (North America).
  • The USA NOAA’s Rapid Refresh Model (North America).
  • The Norwegian Meteorological Institute’s GRIB file forecast for Central Europe (Europe).
  • The Norwegian Meteorological Institute’s GRIB file forecast for Northern Europe (Europe).
  • Worldwide METAR weather reports (Global).
  • The USA NOAA/NCEP’s Short-Range Ensemble Forecast (North America).
  • The USA NOAA/NCEP’s Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis model (North America).


How Do I Switch-On/Off?

In [Team Settings] -> [Main Settings] you'll find some options to configure forecasts and severe weather alerts. They're switched on by default, so no action is required unless you wish to disable it. In  [Team Settings] -> Modules -> [Weather] you'll find the incident weather reporting fields configuration and the ability to switch it off. 

If you need a hand, email our success team.

If you'd like to ask a question or submit an idea, why not join the discussion in our new support area.

or... enquire about [D4H]  for your organization.

4 Reasons You Should Know The Weather for Emergency Response Training.

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Being an Irish company we always have something to say about the weather. That's why we believe it is vitally important that you and your team are aware of the conditions in your training area - And most importantly, knowing what the effect it will have on the training session. 


1) Participant Welfare - While you are running an emergency response exercise with professionals you still should take time to ensure their welfare is being met and allowing time within that long training session to be allocated to warming them up/ cooling them down and feeding/watering appropriately. 

2) Equipment - Depending on your training session and the task you are going to train on, you may require specialist gear and extra carrying capacity depending on the weather. For example, if it is going to be high angle technical rescue in a warm desert type region you may need to allow for 3 litre of water for each member of staff / per day. If it is a large session of 150 people - that would mean 450kg of water a day!

3) Operational Area Safety - As you know extreme weather can turn a safe operational practice area into a potentially lethal one. Knowing what the weather has been like and the forecasted weather - can ensure that you are practicing in a good 'risk vs reward' area. For example, doing swiftwater practice rescues on a river that is 'Bank Full' and more heavy rain is due, could turn the perfect training area into a death trap. 

4) Availability Of Resources - Using [D4H] you should be aware of the statistical likelihood of an incident in your response area depending on the weather conditions. Using this data will allow you to make sure you don't get caught out on having the necessary resources available for possible responses. 

We have just released our weather module for Decisions [D4H]. Optimizing your response team is why we created [D4H], find out more about the software  that is optimizing response teams in 11 countries. 




The Emergency Services Show [D4H]

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BIRMINGHAM, UK - Many of the [D4H] crew made the annual pilgrimage to the Emergency Services Show on the 25th and 26th of this month.


It was great to meet all our existing and potential customers at this years ESS, listen to their feedback and talk about product ideas. ESS has been a key date in our diary for a number of years now and is highly recommended for anyone involved in the emergency services, planning, response or recovery. This year saw a change of venue to The NEC, Birmingham Airport which made travel a breeze.


As always there was a fantastic array of vehicles on display. We were particularly tempted by the hovercraft, thinking it would make a practical vehicle for the quick commute across the bay from Dublin city centre to The Baily Lighthouse, Howth.


If you were at the conference and didn't get the opportunity to talk to either Customer support or Sales feel free to drop us a email and we can arrange a call or online demo. 


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