Emergency Reporting Points
Emergency Reporting Points are a new initiative using current technology.
The ERP has been designed to respond to the greater demands of life saving managers and personnel to extend services beyond normal areas of deployment. Many incidents occur in remote areas where dangers to the community may not always be obvious and deployment of human resources is not practical and often these dangers are variable in time and location. This presents some difficulties in risk management for services and the ERP can be simply and effectively re-located into these areas with a number of features over and above traditional fixed location devices. Used in conjunction with SLSA nationally recognised signage and other technologies such as remote surf safety cameras the ERP provides risk management strategies to ensure appropriate public safety in remote and extended areas.
By utilising conventional UHF/VHF radio or mobile telephony services the ERP can be deployed in most areas of the coast and waterways. Simple and effective use of these technologies allows emergency reporting and voice information to be received by local or regional communication centers. Field evaluation has proved the community recognises these devices, as they are common on motorways, public transport and access areas throughout the world today. For other applications the ERP can be modified and used as a fixed service with fixed line telephone services or GSM / GPRS mobile technology.
Features:
The ERP presents a simple approach to identification by the community using a standard red and yellow colored design. Instructions located on the front audio panel and a large red activation (push to talk button) allows easy identification and use. On activation a selcall alert is sent from the internal radio transceiver, a blue strobe location light begins to flash and a highly audible siren sounds for 5 seconds. The strobe light allows high visibility for responding agencies and the siren provides for attention to be drawn to the immediate area and a deterrent from misuse or malicious activations.
As a further anti-tamper device an internal switch detects when the unit is moved, automatically triggering an alert.
The effectiveness of the ERP is further enhanced by encoding GPS (Global Positioning) information sent when the alert button is depressed. When used with mapping and other management programs (such as SLSA Surf Manager) this allows the ERP to be located quickly and appropriate resources responded to the scene.
BeachComs Camera Surveillance
To better understand WA beach environments and conditions and allow appropriate allocation of resources Surf Life Saving WA has entered into a strategic partnership with Coastal Watch (www.coastalwatch.com) to install and operate BeachCOMS.
What is it?
The Beach Conditions Monitoring System (‘BeachCOMS') is an automated observation system for coastal monitoring. The system is comprised of a shore-mounted video camera network and sophisticated image processing routines for analysis and display of coastal environment information.
What does it do?
BeachCOMS provides comprehensive real-time and predictive information about beach and surf conditions. The real-time data includes offshore wave height, nearshore wave height, wind direction and strength, surf quality, beach state, beach usage and shoreline position. Combined with data from other sources, such as tide predictions and expert observations, the collected data is stored and used to train predictive algorithms for short-term forecasting of nearshore wave height and surf quality, beach state changes, and beach user risk.
BeachCOMS addresses a need for readily accessible real-time and predictive information on beach and surf conditions. It is easily installed and provides coverage over wide areas of coastline while conveniently displaying the information at a single location.
BeachCOMS offers seven modules of information relating to beach conditions. The information provided in each module is often related to, and dependent upon, the information in the other modules. Each module may consist of display elements derived directly from video, raw data from climatic and other physical processes, and processed information (including predictive information) derived from this raw data. A BeachCOMS user organisation may select any or all modules depending on the characteristics of their location and the needs of that organisation.
The seven modules are:
1. Vision
2. Wave Height
3. Beach State
4. Beach Risk
5. Surf Quality
6. Beach Usage
7. Shoreline Position
