Smartphones and the SAR Mission, Part III: Management

While not specifically a smartphone application, in this installment I'll discuss a tool that you may find helpful for incident management and team administration. Incident management is an interesting problem for technology. On one hand, incident management is well adapted to techological solutions for word processing, mapping, and communications. On the other hand, we operate in envrionments that don't lend themselves to easy techological solutions. Cell coverage is spotty or non-existent, power is not available or reliable, and often the command post is the front seat of a pickup truck. For this reason, my preference for technological solutions are those that work in the developing world. They must work with older computers in areas with compromised cell coverage. Keep in mind, however, that technology marches forward, so what is new today is "older" in a year or two. Also, cell coverage in the "wilderness" grows every year.

Team Administration

For the past two years, the Cave Team has used a handy tool tool to administer the team. We use it to track hours, certifications, calendar RSVPs, and gear. One of the great features of this tool is that it is free, and maintained by a fellow SAR commrade in San Diego. The tool is called Mission Manager, and it is more than a team administration tool; as its name implies it can also be used for mission management. Mission Manager is a cloud application, so all that you need to access it is a web connection and a web browser. Since we use it primarily for team administration, I will expand upon these features. Visit the link above for a comprehensive overview of its features.

Maintaining a team calendar is a fundamental part of team readiness. Members must know, in advance, the training and meeting schedule. Likewise, it is important to track attendance of members so that their training records can be kept accurately. For my team, the calendar is kept in two places: the team's sbsar calendar and in Mission Manager. Since the Google calendar easily integrates with smartphones and other calendar apps, it is the easiest to manage, but when it comes to managing RSVPs and sending reminders, Mission Manager is tops. To be fair, you can export the Mission Manager calendar into your favorite calendar application, but it is a manual step, and must be repeated each time there is a change.

As an event approaches, reminder emails can be sent at user-defined intervals asking for an RSVP for the event. These RSVPs are collected and aggregated into a single list, so that the training officer can quickly see who is attending the training. 

Every month we need to collect and submit hours to Volunteer Forces, and I suspect that my team is similar to many in that it was always a struggle to get an accurate count of hours and miles each month. Combine this with tracking the variety of certifications that must be maintained, and you have an administrative headache. With Mission Manager this headache has been eased significantly. Throughout the month team members login and enter their miles and hours for a variety of events. In fact, we configured Mission Manager to use the categories in the VFU time report spreadsheet. Each member enters the date of the event, how much time was spent, and their miles. If the event was on the team calendar, and they RSVPed, then that event gets automatically placed in their time keeping tab. When it comes time to send in the hours, just select the date range that you want, and the report is quickly generated. No fuss, no muss. Of course, team members still need to input the data, so it doesn't fix that problem.

Recently Mission Manager added the ability to track equipment as well, so we have incorporated this feature for many items in our cache. It allows for a photo of each item, and the item can be assigned to a member so we can track where it goes. 

Mission Management

The acutal mission management features of Mission Manager increase regularly, but I have yet to use them during a real mission. I have used them during a number of training events, and as long as there is a reasonably good internet connection, it works famously. You can quickly assemble teams, assign areas, print paperwork and maps. In fact, one could replace Terrain Navigator for SAR missions with Mission Manager. You have access to satellite imagery, topo maps, USFS maps, POI databases, weather, and a variety of other data sets all of which can be overlayed on your search map. 

The maps above are a search map for a missing person, and a map with ELT plots. These maps also show the cell phone tracking that is available with an application called SARApp that uses Mission Manager's API to overlay team positions and tracks on the search map.

Just about every aspect of a SAR mission is included in Mission Manager. Radio log, clue log, team assignments, debriefing, communications plan, and medical plan are all included. At a recent mutual aid mission in Orange County Mission Manager was used for a portion of the operational period where I was involved. They had a very large LCD monitor that showed the radio log in real time, and that was very helpful for me in the planning section.  Also, teams in Riverside County were searching on the other side of the county line, so it was nice to easily share the mission map with them online so that they knew where we were headed, and what our plans were.

When your incident is over, you can print ALL documentation, including maps, with the press of a single button. How cool is that!?

Mission Manager is free for all, but if you choose to use it, I recommend that you donate to the cause to help the author of the tool keep the lights on.

Comments

[Robert Hill]

Great article Jeff. In my opinion, Mission Manager has been the best means of reporting SAR hours we have used. I didnt realize the maps you recently sent out after the last ELT training we put together with MM. MM being FREE for SAR teams helps to keep any team funds raised for other needs.

Thank you for the article, training and the backend work you and the command staff do,

robert