ARCOS Launches Incident Manager Software to Automate Emergency Response
ARCOS LLC – a provider of resource management software and services for critical infrastructure industries – has released its new Incident Manager software to help utilities and other industries automatically plan for and respond to emergencies ranging from storms to security breaches.
“A company might have its own methodology for emergency response or follow FEMA’s Incident Command Structure, or ICS. Either way, supervisors can use Incident Manager to automatically activate employees for their emergency roles and carry out drills,” said Bill Brackett, vice president for Services and Support at ARCOS. “Executives can use Incident Manager to capture a real-time view of their entire organization’s state of operational readiness, including any gaps in resources.”
ARCOS designed Incident Manager for organizations to use in preparing for emergencies, including mobilizing staff to respond to emergent events. But the tool also plays a valuable role in recording real-time actions and data reports that are part of emergency response. As both an emergency and blue-sky, or daily, operations platform for any event, employers can use Incident Manager to replace paper files, emails and phone calls with dashboards, computerized ICS templates and IVR and SMS.
“With Incident Manager, company leaders can outline an emergency scenario and develop an organizational structure with the resources and roles needed for response,” added Matt Mikula, senior director of product management for ARCOS. “Organizations can then create a cloud-based action plan alerting personnel, confirming employee response and documenting progress during the event, including winding down operations and releasing workers from emergency roles.”
As employers either ramp up or scale back their emergency response, Incident Manager will fire off notifications to any grouping of employees, while determining employee readiness and location. Through APIs, ARCOS can integrate Incident Manager with an organization’s document management system to archive action reports (e.g., ICS Form 215A “Incident Action Plan Safety Analysis”) and written directives during an event, tapping this storehouse afterward for best practices. Executives can also draw from Incident Manager’s archive to quickly develop reports for government agencies and other third parties. Incident Manager’s ability to create templates and store documents gives managers closed-loop reporting and feedback that no manual process can mirror. Incident Manager complements the ARCOS Resource Management platform, which organizations use as a platform for responding to, restoring and reporting on daily operations and interruptions in service.
