95%
faster reporting
(training hours pulled in 30 seconds vs. hours manually)
85%
reduction in staff time
(6–8 staff vs. 1 staff member)
4X
increase in operational use cases
(including training records, budget justification, disaster preparedness, and FEMA/reimbursement reporting)
Overview
Harnett County Emergency Services has a clear mission: to prevent injuries, save lives, and reduce property damage in Harnett County, North Carolina. At the center of this work is Zach Shean, Emergency Management Coordinator — and Juvare WebEOC administrator — whose team is tasked with keeping the community safe, prepared, and resilient. Zach & team’s work covers both incident response and daily operations, including emergency response & deployment tracking, arson investigations, and training & records management. Since adopting WebEOC five years ago, the platform has become essential to Harnett County’s operations. As Zach describes it: “I don’t come from a tech background. I just have a love and passion for technology and capabilities. I’ve dealt with variations of platforms and record management softwares, and [Juvare] is there for us. Juvare has become, over the last three or four years, my favorite platform. That’s why I stay as passionate as I do, because I see the day-today capabilities.”
Proven, Trusted Partner “Juvare has become, over the last three or four years, my favorite platform. That’s why I stay as passionate as I do—because I see the day-to-day and disastertime capabilities.
Looking to expand the capability of WebEOC, Harnett County has started taking advantage of JAI, the Juvare AI Assistant. Embedded directly into WebEOC and delivering enhanced search, summary, and visualization, JAI has provided immediate value to Zach & his team, helping to streamline daily ops and prepare them for potential incidents.
Quick Time-to-Value with JAI
Harnett County joined the pilot program for JAI, receiving hands-on implementation support from the Juvare team and providing valuable user feedback that helped shape the tool.
Before JAI, reporting and data analysis were manual and time-intensive.
- 6–8 staff members were often needed to pull and summarize data.
- Critical functions (budget requests, disaster reimbursement, deployment tracking) were slowed by Excel and manual workflows.
- Leadership needed faster, more efficient reporting to justify resources, prepare for incidents, and meet FEMA/reimbursement deadlines.
With JAI pulling data in real-time from Harnett County’s WebEOC boards, here’s just some of what Zach’s team has already accomplished:
- Budget justification: in seconds, Zach was able to summarize all their training hours to complement their request for a net new position.
- Tabletop functional exercises: collaborating with their Public Information team, Zach’s team was able to easily pull together data points into concise talking points that the PI team used for mock press briefing.
- Resource tracking: Zach’s team regularly pulls reports on deployed assets — with data feeding directly from their Requests, Inventory, and Deployments (RID) board — on both blue sky and gray sky days, ensuring asset visibility at all times.
Operational Impact
Budget Justification: Pulled all training hours in 30 seconds – successfully secured a new full-time position.
Resilience: Migrated preparedness and assessment workflows to JAI-powered WebEOC boards.
Preparedness: Summarized data for mock press briefings and training exercises.
Efficiency: Cut reporting staff needs from 6–8 to just 1.
These efficiencies in gathering and analyzing data have already provided Zach’s team with considerable time savings: “If my team has seven or eight people that have backgrounds in different disciplines, and we have a support tool that has an impartial mindset that is going to provide the data and the summarization, then I can take just one or two of those staff members and have them verify and vet that information.”
Simplifying the FEMA Declaration Process “JAI is enabling the ability to reduce a lot of overhead costs, disaster timeframes, and presidential declarations.
Potential Financial Savings
In addition to these operational wins, Zach sees JAI providing opportunities for financial savings and more efficient cost recovery in the event of disaster: “JAI is enabling the ability to reduce a lot of overhead costs, disaster timeframes, and presidential declarations. We’re looking at the recovery and funding matrix for reimbursement to be captured there.
So if we can expedite our recovery process or damage assessment process and our staff hours during activation and response, then ultimately I feel like that’s a good investment back into our community for a small cost.” With North Carolina vulnerable to a spectrum of weather-related crises — from hurricanes and tropical storms, to tornadoes and flooding — the ability of counties to accurately report damage and receive essential recovery funding is paramount; in fact, FEMA has provided nearly $322M to North Carolina since January 2025. JAI’s ability to help counties — not just in North Carolina, but across the country — to secure this federal funding only furthers the ability of teams like Zach’s to keep their communities resilient.
JAI is not just saving time — it’s saving money and protecting taxpayers.
- Reduced overhead costs for reporting and staff time.
- Faster FEMA reimbursements, helping secure recovery funds quickly (in a state that has already received $322M in 2025).
- Sustainable community investment — a small AI investment is creating a big return.
A Partner, Not a Replacement
Harnett County’s experiences with JAI so far confirm Zach’s feeling that integrated AI capabilities complement his team’s work rather than replace the human element in emergency response. Zach believes JAI will let him better allocate his team members’ time; rather than having six to eight people running down various data for reporting and analysis, Zach hopes to dedicate a single resource to situation reports, common operating pictures, and general incident summarization.
“I think AI is changing some of our approaches in all phases of emergency management. I don’t think that, at this time, it’s replacing the actual human interface and the human experience and knowledge,” shares Zach. “I think the human and the technology working together gives us the chance to adapt and improve and better utilize the tools in our toolbox.”.
How Harnett County Uses JAI:
- Funding success (budget requests and staffing)
- Preparedness and training exercises
- Daily efficiency in reporting and resource tracking
- Resilience in disaster & recovery operations
Impact, Today and Tomorrow
With the one-two punch of WebEOC’s workflows and JAI’s AI-driven insights, Harnett County has:
- Improved reporting speed by 95%
- Reduced staff time requirements by 85%
- Expanded JAI use cases across training, preparedness, and FEMA reimbursement
- Strengthened fiscal responsibility to taxpayers
Harnett County’s experience proves that JAI isn’t just a disaster tool — it’s a daily operational asset that drives measurable results and resilience.
Zach sees continued success with WebEOC and JAI, with the Juvare platform enhancing his team’s operations and making them better stewards of Harnett County’s funds: “The Juvare platform has proven its worth to us day in and day out. When we collect and process data, either manually or with AI, during training exercises and actual disasters, we gain insights that improve our capabilities and also let us be fiscally responsible with tax dollars and funding sources.”
Customer Perspective
On efficiency “What we had six to eight people doing, JAI can now do with one—summarizing reports, common operating pictures, and disaster data instantly.”
On efficiency
“What we had six to eight people doing, JAI can now do with one—summarizing reports, common operating pictures, and disaster data instantly.”
On partnership with Juvare
On partnership with Juvare “Ideas don’t die in an email. The Juvare team actually listens, implements, and improves based on our feedback.”
On overall value
On overall value “The Juvare platform has proven its worth day in and day out—in training, exercises, and actual disasters.”
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