As a rock climber I view the mountain rescue services with a mixture of potential embarrassment and a lot of respect. On the embarrassment side of things, I worry about someday being stuck on a ledge in Dalkey Quarry with an over sized team of rescuers determined to strap me into a stretcher whether I need it or not, and all this to the cheers and jeers of a large crowd of onlookers.
However when the mist starts to descend over the Wicklow hills and you realize that you are lost there is great comfort in knowing that a well trained, well equipped and organized group of rescuers are willing to brave the elements to bring you down safely. It is the organisation of volunteer rescue teams that Decisions For Heroes focuses on.
What is Decisions For Heroes?
Decisions for heroes is a rescue team management web application that aims to save lives by making volunteer rescue teams more efficient and enable them to share vital knowledge between groups. Rescue teams using Decisions For Heroes are provided with a simple web interface where they can log all their training and rescue activities along with details of their team members. It then provides analysis, such as heat maps of the number of incidents in an area, that enable the team to plan how best to meet the unique challenges of their local area.
What is fantastic about the goals of the product is its genuine life saving potential. I love the fact that web 2.0 technology has allowed a small Irish company to make such a big difference to a vital worldwide service. 10 years ago this just wouldn’t have been possible.
How Well Does It Work?
The product itself is fairly simple and it only took me about 10 minutes for me to get to grips with it. I think that the Byte Surgery team have done an excellent job in providing an intuitive user experience and it looks like they have stripped out any unnecessary features so it is very focused. What is left is clear, concise and blindingly fast.
Decisions For Heroes in action
- Dashboard – Summarise the key activities that have taken place, with short cuts through to reports,etc
- Activities – This is the core input area of the product, where training sessions are scheduled and logged. Incidents are logged according to a timeline of: alert received, arrived on scene, departed scene and time the team stood down. There is a very nice Google Maps mash-up as part of this interface.
- Members – This section lists the details of each of the team members with their qualifications, also lists the incidents that they have attended.
- Analysis – The analysis section is where I think most of the value of this product will be delivered. It is through the reports on Decisions For Heroes that teams get to see where the geographical hot spots in their area are and what they need to be prepared for. It also makes it clear which team members are responding and what resources the team needs.
Byte Surgery have also taken a really nice approach to product features requests. First of all, it is integrated into the product allowing you to request an improvement as you are using a particular feature. In addition, your feature request is then shared with other users in the system, allowing them to contribute, so when the feature is eventually coded it should be well thought out.
Overall I’m extremely impressed with Decisions For Heroes and I think any organised rescue team will see immediate benefits from using it.
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