A tip about these efforts comes our way via Ian Batley directing us to information provided on the MAPS blog
From the MAPS Planning and Support website…
Background
During 2010 the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) predicted that the coming wet season for Qld was likely to have more cyclones and rain. In prepearation for this, certain members of the Australian Red Cross in Qld (RCQ) started looking at ways to better involve mapping into their operations during emergencies.
RCQ created a project that involved volunteers from GISCorps and MAPS. This project produced a number of documents which outlined possible scenarios, hardware and software requirements, etc. The GISCorp volunteers also focused on mapping the capacisty of RCQ Emergency Services in the pre emergency period.
During December 2010 the rain really started falling and on the 29th MAPS recieved a call for assistance.
Deployment
By the evening of 29 December we had our first crew on their way to Queensland. They set up in the RCQ’s State Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) in Brisbane. Some initial work of software loading and early map production had been carried out by a GISCorps volunteer (Daniel) and our crew relieved him for some well earned rest. The bulk of the work for the 1st deployment focused on the obtaining of data and map production. In conjunction with this we needed to set up a network, NAS, etc.
The 2nd deployment took over on 3 January and consolidated the data and products and started looking at processes to automate some of the work.
The 4th deployment were really in the thick of it having to relocate. The EOC needed to move as it was in a suburb of Brisbane that was going to be without power and probably access. So it was a case of pack everything and relocate. They did this with minimal fuss and were operational again in a very short time.
Our 5th deployment goes tomorrow (14 January) to relieve the current crew and it looks like this will continue for a while.
Numbers deployed so far (incl 5th deployment) – 18
See Details http://maps-group.org/pages/queensland-floods-2010-11
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