Prepare for Impact: Preparedness

In emergency management, Preparedness is the continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating and taking corrective action. Training and exercising plans is the foundation of preparedness, which focuses on readiness to respond to all hazards, incidents and emergencies. Training and emergency preparedness plans increase a community’s ability to respond when a disaster occurs. Typical preparedness measures include developing mutual aid agreements and memorandums of understanding, training for both response personnel and concerned citizens, conducting disaster exercises to reinforce training and test capabilities, and presenting all-hazards education campaigns.

Here are some ways you can leverage D4H to support your Emergency Management Agency (EMA) in the Preparedness stage of the emergency management lifecycle.

Personnel & Training

Groups

Establish groups in D4H and manage members of your team within their designated groups to organize your team members for communication and other management functions.

Qualifications

Track your team's qualifications, courses, and certifications in D4H, allowing you to ensure that both members and animals on your team are in compliance with any necessary standards. Proactive qualification alerts and reminders in D4H can help you to plan and schedule any required training necessary in advance to renew their qualifications and prevent any lapses.
Set expectations for the members of your team that are required to hold specific qualifications.
Keep a digital, easily accessible copy of member’s qualification certificates in D4H for streamlined record-keeping.

Resources

Create resources to monitor the involvement of external agencies, teams, facilities, and organizations in your activities, overseeing their attendance and analyzing and generating reports on the frequency of different activity types for each resource.

Training Exercises

Customize data collection within Exercises by setting up custom fields.
Build a schedule of pre-planned training exercises and request team members to attend and collect their responses in real-time.
Track equipment usage during your exercises, allowing you to track and analyze usage frequency, associated costs, and identify restocking requirements for consumable items.
Add in costing for personnel, equipment, or other expenses into your exercise to document the costs associated.
Approve exercise activities data post-exercise to ensure data accuracy, facilitating improved data evaluation and future planning.
Duplicate the exercise for ease of use in scheduling similar exercises.

On/Off-Call Planner

Establish your team’s default setting for the on/off-call planner to aid with resource allocation and minimize errors by offering predefined parameters for planning on-call rotations.
Prompt your members to update their entries in the on/off-call planner to monitor available resources day-by-day. Set required levels of groups or qualifications to ensure the right complement of skills are always available on-call and ready to respond.

Equipment Management

Organize your equipment by creating categories and kinds for inventory accessibility, and maintenance scheduling.
Add your individual equipment items within their respective category and kind for inventory management, and tracking of resources.
Duplicate equipment items for ease-of-use with adding similar equipment items in your inventory.
Set up funding sources to help you manage grants and donations by linking items of equipment to a specific funding source. It will also allow for greater tracking of what equipment was bought when a renewal or audit occurs.
Customize data collection within equipment items by setting up custom fields.
Establish locations to help you isolate your equipment cache into specific storage locations.
Speed up inventory organization by bulk-moving items to their respective Locations or Issuing them to members on your team, especially when dealing with large quantities of items.
Organize your equipment inventory further by nesting them within other items, such as vehicles, kits or compartments.
Create checklists for each different type of response or technique you undertake or use these lists to print off deployment checklists.
Set supply level thresholds for disposable or consumable items to monitor whether your stock levels are being met or if supplies need replenishing.
Schedule inspections for your equipment to ensure response readiness. Receive dashboard notifications and email alerts when inspections are due, keeping maintenance personnel informed.
Track equipment repair records enabling you to review insights into equipment performance, maintenance needs, and costs, aiding in decisions regarding equipment replacements and resource allocation.

Incident Reporting

Confirm D4H products integration is set up to minimize the need for manual data entry and enhance data accuracy.
Plan software usage as it pertains to persons involved feature, enabling you to complete victim reports including injuries, medical assistance rendered, and outcomes.
Plan software usage as it pertains to vehicles involved, enabling you to record vehicle details such as license plate numbers, year, make/model, and establish connections to related incident entries for persons involved.
Plan software usage as it pertains to hazardous materials, enabling you to collect valuable data relating to the frequency at which your team encounters various hazardous materials during Incidents.
Plan software usage as it pertains to the lost persons behavior which allows you to transmit data to the ISRID Silver compatible data source. ISRID’s goal is better data, new subject categories, more regional data approaches, and better survivability analysis.
Tailor data collection in incident reports by configuring custom fields, which might overlap with the setup of D4H products integration.
Incorporate historical incident activities to enrich your D4H account with more data for analyzing trends and patterns over time.
Establish saved custom reports to monitor the frequency of your incidents and configure automations of your custom incident reports so you can monitor for keywords or triggers that should be highlighted to you.

Incident Management

Confirm D4H products integration is set up to minimize the need for manual data entry and enhance data accuracy.
Finalize your team’s account settings and preferences which ensures that the account operates according to your specific preferences.
Finalize your team’s account template configurations, allowing you to easily create tools that meet the specific needs of any response for your team.
Create and store pre-loaded content within collections, ensuring its availability for your team during incident responses.
Configure your team's play automations to activate based on the type of event or incident, such as Flooding, Wildfire, Drought, Hurricane, and more. Define which modules should be activated and specify the relevant data from collections, saving valuable time by eliminating the need for manual data creation.
Engaging in tabletop exercises with the D4H account enables your team to collaborate, communicate effectively, and build confidence in their ability to utilize the software during real-life incidents, enhancing preparedness and response capabilities.
Following tabletop exercises, conducting review sessions can improve both operations and software utilization. These sessions enable you to adjust configurations, like the situation template or collection data, to better fit your requirements, while also considering potential impacts on integrations such as the D4H Products Integration.
Starting an incident channel ahead of time in anticipation of known or expected weather conditions can facilitate preparation efforts.
Inviting responding personnel to the incident channel in advance serves as a proactive measure, aiding in emergency management preparations.

General

Confirm that all users can access your team’s account through both web and mobile applications and address any access issues as needed, to ensure seamless accessibility during incidents.
Coordinate user training sessions to ensure users understand their responsibilities regarding software usage, which bolsters emergency preparedness efforts.
Monitor all actions throughout the entire Emergency Management lifecycle to ensure thorough preparedness for emergency response efforts.

Settings

Prepare your D4H accounts settings to ensure everything is configured to meet your team’s needs.

Incorporate your team's custom logo and update the theme in general settings to create a cohesive brand identity and manage primary settings such as measurement units and currency for streamlined operations.
Configure module level settings, such as costing settings, health & safety settings, and more to align the software with your team's specific requirements.
Customize member profile custom fields, activity settings, and more in Personnel & Training settings to streamline personnel management and processes.
Establish equipment barcoding, oversee equipment categories and kinds, personalize equipment retirement reasons, and more in Equipment Management settings to optimize equipment tracking and maintenance, to ensure readiness for emergency response.
Establish API connections in Integrations to facilitate seamless data exchange between software systems, improving data accuracy and accessibility.
Customize data captured beyond built-in fields using custom fields and incident timestamps, to enable tailored data collection and analysis for informed decision-making.
Bookmark frequently used activity locations and update the default activity map in map settings to enhance situational awareness during emergencies.
Control email notification recipients for your entire team, examine access logs, statistics, and audit logs in usage & logs settings to ensure accountability, and compliance across operations.