What is US&R
The National Urban Search & Rescue (US&R) Response System is a framework for organizing federal, state and local partner emergency response teams as integrated federal search and rescue task forces. The 28 National US&R Task Forces, complete with the necessary tools, equipment, skills and techniques, can be deployed by FEMA to assist state and local governments in rescuing victims of structural collapse incidents or to assist in other search and rescue missions.
The 28 task forces are located throughout the continental United States. Any task force can be activated and deployed by FEMA to a disaster area to provide assistance in structural collapse rescue, or, they may be prepositioned when a major disaster threatens a community. Each task force must have all its personnel and equipment at the embarkation point within six hours of activation so that it can be dispatched and en route to its destination in a matter of hours.
More information about FEMA Urban Search & Rescue
MYDB Solutions - US&R
The US&R Organizer began as a project that started in 2008 between Utah Task Force One and MyDB Solutions.
It has grown to meet additional requirements set by FEMA, while also expanding the capabilities to meet the individual demands of 12 different FEMA Search and Rescue teams.
Expanding Capabilities
A number of improvements were made in this version to expanding the capabilities of the system to meet an ever growing list of requirements that each task force has requested. Each change is planned out and executed in a way that meets the needs of all group and not just a specific group. The main challenge with the expanding list of demands is to make each change relevant and usable for each group, while also making sure that a change does not get in the way of a group that might not want to use a requested feature.
Continuing Support
US&R Organizer continues to grow, in 2015 and 2016 we have held a user summit with 30 representatives from various organizations coming to gain additional training with the system. Each summit we hold an open discussion to allow everyone to provide feedback and request new features, that are sure to improve the system for everyone in the future.
Extra care and attention was paid to each layout to improve the UI, while also taking into consideration the UX to streamline common tasks. One Task Force brought us an example of a task that they counted mouse clicks. It took them 17 mouse clicks to achieve the task. In version 3 we were able to get that task down to just 2 mouse clicks.
While it is not completely optimized for mobile devices, version 3 was the first step in bring this solution to mobile devices.
