Emergency response intelligence capability: Improving situation reporting in the Australian Government Department of Human Services

The Emergency Response Intelligence Capability (ERIC) is a web-based productivity tool developed by CSIRO for the Australian Government Department of Human Services (hereafter referred to as the department). ERIC automatically gathers u0027liveu0027 web feed data about emergency events from authoritative Australian web sources, harmonises the information content, archives the content in a database, presents it in a map-based web application, and semi-automatically generates situation reports. This allows the departmentu0027s Emergency Management Operations team to monitor events occurring around the country and provides fast and intuitive access to a wide collection of information, including demographic data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Information for a specific region under investigation can be extracted and collated semi-automatically to generate situation reports that include information synthesised from available datasets and augmented by user provided content. The current status of the ERIC project is provided with a focus on how it is being trialled by the department to improve the business process of creating and maintaining situation reports during emergency events.