Celebrating the bespoke mapping platform created for ResilienceDirect

Taking evidence and turning it into the mapping solution for the emergency services.

Wantage, Oxfordshire 15 June 2021 – Airbox Systems is the preferred situational awareness software used across the emergency services, in 2018 it became the provider of mapping technology behind ResilienceDirect. Shortly after taking over the contract it was made clear that the software needed to be updated to allow it to meet the challenges of the future.

Jim Grafton, a frequent user of the ResilienceDirect platform was planning at the time for The Black Music Festival and Chapeltown Carnival, creating event maps which would be used during the construction and takedown phases of the event, as well as for crowd management and even Incident Management during the event itself. “As part of map creation, I manually added a grid layer so we could quickly give simple grid references to those on the ground.”

In the following months the platform was completely rebuilt. Taking into account the requirements of users such as Jim, the platform was launched with new functionality. Included in the platform were grid and annotation tools, allowing users to show entry/exit points for ambulances and other emergency vehicles into the controlled areas. A key development for ResilienceDirect mapping has been the ability to import data overlays; by adding this functionality into ResilienceDirect it has allowed users of KML/KMZ?to add detailed images to their maps. These files can be marked up with images over the base map layer.

Jim concluded his conversation by saying that “RD Maps is invaluable to the work my team and I do when planning events. In the case of the festival and carnival, the platform was able to facilitate a greater degree of control and improved response times in the case of a fatal incident. RD provides the resilience community with a GIS tool they wouldn’t normally have access to due to the in-accessibility and cost of other systems.”

Under the leadership of Luana Avagliano, Head of ResilienceDirect, the new mapping service has enabled civil protection practitioners to work together across geographical and organisational boundaries, during, preparation, response and recovery phases of thousands of emergencies.

#ResislienceDirect?# LeedsCityCouncil #GIS #Eventmanagement