Emergency Management

WebEOC for the New Zealand Health Sector

WebEOC is the primary tool for the management of information in Emergency Operations Centres within the New Zealand health sector for significant incidents and emergencies at a local, regional and national level. It is a crisis information management system that provides secure real-time information sharing.

WebEOC works in conjunction with Emergeo, a GIS tool for emergency managers. Together they form the core of the health sector web-enabled Emergency Management Information System (EMIS). Work is also under way to develop APIs (Application Programming Interface) for the system to allow data exchange with business as usual systems.

Login to WebEOC

Note: You will need your organisation's login details to access WebEOC.

About WebEOC

WebEOC complements existing business as usual systems such as Episurv or patient management systems.

WebEOC is an adaptable system and the initial build reflects the core requirements. Routine enhancements and developments are described more fully on the WebEOC blog: http://nzhealthwebeoc.blogspot.com/

There is a formal set of standards and processes governing the development of the New Zealand health sector WebEOC system. These will be aligned to best practice and will include a formal change management process.

While the focus is on the health sector, WebEOC is intended to facilitate structured information sharing with local, regional and national partners.

WebEOC uses a Microsoft SQL database that contains records for all incidents. Multiple incidents can be tracked at the same time. Only records for the active incident being worked on are visible to a user.

WebEOC enables “real-time” information posting and communication over a secure internet connection. This information includes text status reports, chat rooms, visual displays for maps and photos, resource tracking, personnel tracking, task tracking, etc.

WebEOC also has a Geographical Information System (GIS) plug-in called Emergeo which allows WebEOC entries to be referenced on a map as viewing geographic data from other agencies, such as evacuation zones.

WebEOC is structured to use the Coordinated Incident Management System (CIMS) in order to manage tasks, activity and information in functional areas: Coordination/Control, Operations, Planning and Intelligence, Communications/Public Information Management, Liaison and Logistics.

Latest changes

10 February: Rotating Board display and Incident Action Plan

A number of new boards have been finalised over the new year. These include a ‘Rotating Board Display’ that allows a screen to display multiple boards that will rotate against a user specified time period. This is an excellent way of presenting information from several boards such as EOC Sig Events, National Sig Events and Incident Details on a single projector.

An Incident Action Plan has also been developed that can be printed in either sections or it’s entirety as a pdf. Built into WebEOC it means that IAPS are easily shared across the sector and the relevant sections can be printed when required.

10 February: WebEOC Blog

A webeoc blog is available at http://nzhealthwebeoc.blogspot.com/ that will be used to track ongoing enhancements and refinements to boards and processes. It also records details of training and exercises and other developments linked to the health Emergency management Information System.

This official Ministry webpage will still be used to publicise major newboards and as a repository of training material and documentation.

10 February: Updated presentations

The written guidance has been updated to reflect the new boards and enhancements that have been made.

Older updates
Older updates are available at the bottom of this page.

Training resources

WebEOC will be practiced during training sessions and exercises, but the following videos and written guidance available for you to train and familiarise yourself at your own pace.

You will need your organisation's login details to access WebEOC. Your organisation's emergency manager or WebEOC “superuser” will have these details.

If you are training on WebEOC, be sure to log onto a “Training Incident” and not a real incident.

Instructional videos

The links below provide videos that show WebEOC processes in combination with a step-by-step voiceover. If you have not used WebEOC before, you may find it beneficial to familiarise yourselves prior to any formal training.

The videos below are available in two sizes: High Quality Large (640*480 c.580 kbps) and High Quality Small (320*240 c.200 kbps).

Introduction and the control panel - large (WMV, 21 MB (Time: 6:06)
Introduction and the control panel - small (WMV, 6 MB) (Time: 6:06)
Incidents and Master Incidents - large (WMV, 11 MB) (Time: 2:42)
Incidents and Master Incidents - small (WMV, 2 MB) (Time: 2:42)
Summary of forms and reports - large (WMV, 14 MB) (Time: 4:14)
Summary of forms and reports - small (WMV, 3 MB) (Time: 4:14)
Logging and tasking - large (WMV, 22 MB) (Time: 8:27)
Logging and tasking - small (WMV, 6 MB) (Time: 8:27)
Sitreps and Epidemiological Intelligence Reports - large (WMV, 11 MB) (Time: 3:39)
Sitreps and Epidemiological Intelligence Reports - small (WMV, 3 MB) (Time: 3:39)
Incident details, EOC Status, File Library - large (WMV, 13 MB) (Time: 4:18)
Incident details, EOC Status, File Library - small (WMV, 3 MB) (Time: 4:18)

File download instructions
To download the video files above you can either:

Click on the link or
Right click on the link and select 'Save Target As' from the menu that appears to save the file to your computer.

In order to view these files you will need Microsoft's Windows Media Player. If you are using an older version of Windows Media Player you may need to upgrade this in order to view the video correctly. If you do not have Media Player currently, or you need to upgrade, you can download Windows Media Player for free.

Written guidance

Training material under development

Further training material will be developed to reflect ongoing developments within WebEOC. Current material under development includes:

Video guide for the Emergeo GIS Browser
Short 5-8 minutes overview video that will cover the current areas in less detail
Guidance for EOC Managers on WebEOC set-up and deployment

Questions, faults and development

Questions

If you have any questions about WebEOC, please contact your emergency manager or email webeoc@moh.govt.nz.

Faults and suggestions

WebEOC is a highly configurable system. If something doesn’t work as you expect or could be done better, please complete the fault reporting and suggestions form below and email the form to webeoc@moh.govt.nz.

WebEOC fault reporting and suggestions.form (Word, 25 KB)

If you’ve got an idea for a great board, please discuss it initially with your WebEOC Emergency Manager or WebEOC superuser, as it may be under development already. Or you can email details to the address above.

Current boards under development

The following boards and processes are currently under development and will be added to the control panel in due course:

Passenger tracking board for those entering local authority care for quarantine in the event of an emerging pandemic.
Facility Status Boards
Personnel and Resource deployment tracking
Integration of Emergeo GIS with other applications

Emergency Management Information System (EMIS) Reference Group

A cross sector WebEOC Reference Group meets occasionally to discuss features, enhancements and processes to be developed in WebEOC. The group met on 13 November and agreed the terms of reference, and reviewed the current training and use of WebEOC in a number of exercises.

The next WebEOC Reference Group meeting will be in May 2009.

EMIS ‘Board Builders Boot Camp’

A two day administrator’s course and board building session was held on 9 and 10 December and was attended by a number of emergency managers, web developers and public health specialists.

The course was extremely successful with a number of boards built in development, and a number of local and national business as usual systems identified as being suitable for an API.

Another Board Builders Boot Camp will be run towards the middle of 2009.

Photo of people participating at an emergency management training exercise.

Photo of people participating at an emergency management training exercise.

Emergency management training exercise in progress

Feedback from incidents and exercises

WebEOC has been used on a regional and national basis in a number of regional and national exercises including Ex Ruaumoko, Choking Ash, and Spring Fever. It was also recently used by St John Central Region to monitor the Mahia beach fire, as well as being activated, but not used for the Auckland power outage.

Over the summer a number of agencies are planning on using WebEOC to manage the health aspects of some large pre-planned public events and details of these will eb posted to the blog.

These incidents and exercises have all demonstrated the improved common operating picture across health agencies available through WebEOC, as well as highlighting a number of areas for ongoing development. In particular, guidance is being developed on the type of information and process to develop it for the situation reports and action plans.

Ex Choking Ash also demonstrated that it was possible for a Health Liaison Officer to a CDEM group to obtain GIS shape files, save them as a National Sig Event and the NHCC rapidly add them to the Emergeo GIS browser so that they became an interactive GIS layer rather than simply a pdf image.

Historical updates

Restructured control panel - 18 Dec 2008

The control panel has been simplified by grouping common functions such as Epidemiological Intelligence Reports and SitReps into menu items. Depending on your user access permission, you may have slightly different menu options.

New weblink board - 18 Dec

A new board called ‘Weblinks’ has been added to all users control panel. This allows Incident Controllers, EOC Managers and EOC assistants to add or edit any weblink, while other users in that agency may click and go to the website. The board can also be used to provide links to internal intranet sites.

Boards to be re-numbered - 18 Dec

The number of current boards and boards under development require a revision of their naming to keep better track of what is visible to end users. Accordingly, boards are being re-numbered and grouped into functional areas. This means that users will have a selection of boards that reflect their role - resulting in an incomplete sequence (i.e. boards 1,2,3,5,7,8,15,16). A list of the re-numbered boards will shortly be made available.

File Library - 5 Nov

The file library has had a number of read-only folders created with copies of national guidance, plans and legislation. These folders will be further populated with the DHB health emergency plans as they are finalised. Each agency has also has an ‘agency only’ folder created where internal documents, such as operating procedures or contact lists can be stored.

Task Summary display - 5 Nov

An extra column has been added to the Task Summary Display on the right hand side. This displays your agency’s response to the task. For example you may have completed your agency response to a task but the task may still be shown as in progress by the agency that created it.

Clarification of event log terminology - 5 Nov

The terminology for the position, EOC and Sig Event logs has been modified slightly. Hopefully this will more clearly show the inter-relationship between the logs.

Old Board name	New Board name
Position Log	Position Event Log
EOC Activity Log	EOC Event Log
EOC Sig Events	EOC Sig Events (no change)
National Sig Events	National Sig Events (no change)

Page last updated: 10 July 2009