Edwards, who served as commencement logistics chief, focused his assessment on WebEOC Boards, the built-in data and process workflows that provide users at-a-glance situational awareness and allow them to coordinate with other users and make critical decisions.
He said the university used three Boards during the event: the Requests/Inventory/Deployments (RID) Board, the Incident Action Plan (IAP) Builder, and the Event Reporting Board.
The RID Board helped Liberty’s Emergency Management Department track the distribution of resources ranging from radios and drones to pedestrian barricades and bottled water.
While planning for the event, Edwards used the RID Board to create an inventory of available resources. As resources were deployed during commencement, the Board allowed him to track their location, quantity, and status accurately and efficiently in real time. “We were in the process of integrating new radios and replacing old ones, so there were a lot of radios going in and out of the EOC and out into the field. This is how I kept track of that,” he said.
The department also made extensive use of the IAP Builder. It posted an Incident Action Plan for each operational period, with each plan comprising several Incident Command System (ICS) forms. These included “ICS 201: Incident Briefing,” which featured a campus map, “ICS 202: Incident Objectives,” and “ICS 204: Assignment List,” which identified the campus police department officers who were on duty, recorded the locations of police traffic posts, and provided contact information for City of Lynchburg fire and medical units. Other forms were dedicated to first aid and hydration tents, the radio communications plan, and the medical plan, which listed the locations of the nearest hospitals and their trauma-center levels.
Using the IAP Board improved information sharing and operational coordination across all aspects of the weekend, including the university’s first-ever commencement fireworks display.
The third Board that played a major role supporting the department’s coordination efforts was Event Reporting. “We used the Event Reporting Board heavily,” said Edwards. “Everybody in the EOC was given access to utilize this, and we ended up with 23 pages of reports.”
Most events were medical calls, a small number of which were classified as major. “This is what we’ll use for our 214,” Edwards added, referring to the “ICS 214: Activity Log” form. “When we submit these for approval, we’ll attach the Significant Events log at the end as a PDF, and that will be our 214.”
