ResilienceDirect, Waze for cities and Airbox Systems have joined together to bring Waze real-time, anonymous, proprietary incident and slow-down information directly from drivers themselves to the emergency responders who use either ResilienceDirect or Airbox Systems’ own situational awareness tool, MOSAIC.
As one of the largest providers of free-to-user situational awareness, ResilienceDirect is a unique digital online private ‘service’ for the UK and overseas territories. ResilienceDirect enables first responders to work together, across geographical and organisational boundaries. This enables those involved to plan, exercise, respond and recover from emergencies working collaboratively across multi agencies.
ResilienceDirect’s platform enables organisations to fulfil their duties by supporting the adoption of multi-agency working practices, and ensuring that key information is readily and consistently available to users. Luana Avagliano, Head of ResilienceDirect, says: ‘This is an exciting opportunity to test crowd-sourced real-time traffic data for our emergency responders. This innovative Pilot is being tested by our ResilienceDirect Users and the effectiveness will be captured in the feedback mechanisms in place.’
The Waze for Cities Data programme is a free, two-way data exchange empowering public sector decisions to achieve concrete community impact. Launched in October 2014 with 10 city partners, the programme has expanded to over 1,500 partners including city, state and country government agencies, academic institutions and first responders. The data provided by Waze is inputted into the ResilienceDirect data visualization and situational awareness tool for users to analyse and make informed decisions. ‘Cities big and small are harnessing technology and data to improve the way they deliver transportation services for residents, and Waze is thrilled to be at the forefront of this movement with our Waze for Cities Data program,’ said Adam Fried, Head of Product Partnerships, Waze. ‘We’re excited to empower our new partner ResilienceDirect with data insights that will help emergency responders make informed planning decisions and respond faster in critical emergencies.’
The mapping system is enabled by the leading situational awareness tool Airbox Systems. ‘The passion of Airbox is to protect life through enabling informed decisions, providing the right information to responders to help protect life. People make good decisions when they have good information. Airbox enables this in high threat environments, delivering situational awareness software for complex and demanding environments. Connecting our passion with that of ResilienceDirect and Waze has enabled a fast roll-out, which we hope makes a positive impact across the emergency services,’ said William Moore, CEO, Airbox.
The data has been released to the entire ResilienceDirect community and the ResilienceDirect super users National Fire Group, National User Group Mapping work stream, Kent Police, Yorkshire County Council and National Ambulance Resilience Unit will be carrying out further in-depth tests.
The Pilot Waze Work Stream is running until October, when the data will be collated and evaluated. If you are a registered ResilienceDirect first responder then you will be able to attend the forthcoming demonstration.
Wednesday, 18 August 2021: 12:30–13:00hrs
To join the session, contact resiliencedirect@cabinetoffice.gov.uk and the meeting details will be shared.
