Fire department and other hazard controlling agencies require a flexible command structure to respond to many different situations. For example, command personnel of a fire department must have the capability to respond to situations ranging from a small fire that can be controlled by a single unit of equipment and crew, to a large scale fire that may require many units of equipment and crews from different departments within an agency and even from different agencies. The basic organization and command line of an agency responding to an incident such as a fire is essentially the same for all emergency incidents, small and large.
An individual referred to as the incident commander is required to direct and manage the operation generally at the site to ultimately gain control of the incident and bring it to a conclusion. A small incident requiring only the deployment of one or two units is relatively uncomplicated. For a small incident the incident commander is generally the supervisor of the first unit to arrive at the scene and assumes the role of directing the units assigned to that site, assigning particular assignments to the units and corresponding crew members. The incident commander having only to manage and direct one or two units can do so without a great deal of organizational concern.
Large scale incidents that require multiple units of equipment and corresponding crews of personnel magnify the organizational concerns of the incident commander. The more equipment required and involved to combat an incident, the more complex the management. Each equipment unit called into service has personnel assigned to the unit and the incident commander assigns the unit and its corresponding crew to a task. The incident commander makes the job assignment and keeps track of the deployment of teams and apparatus. Other agencies, both private and public, may also be employed and they too come under the overall organizational responsibilities of the incident commander.
In order for the incident commander to effectively manage numerous amounts of equipment and personnel involved in a plurality of tasks in a multi-alarm fire, for example, the incident commander needs a tool that will provide ready information of the operation.
Various manual "board" type command systems have been proposed in the prior art, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 5,219,290 issued Jun. 15, 1993 to Lapp et al. The Lapp et al. patent discloses a tool for use by an incident manager and involves the use of tags and various graphics to control the operation of teams and tasks during an incident operation.
The disadvantage of such systems is that they are unable to store information about the operation for later analysis. In particular, important information about team/assignments and movements to provide a historical record of the operation is not readily obtainable from the these manual systems. In addition, the accurate task times of multiple teams in service is difficult to accomplish using manual board type systems.
Personnel computer based incident managers using specialized software have been proposed in the prior art. However, they are generally unsuitable for complex, fast moving operations, because of the small screen size, which makes it difficult to assess the status of an incident in a glance, and complex controls that render them functionally limited in high stress command situations.
Consequently, it would be desirable to provide an electronic accountability apparatus that will enable an operations history to be downloaded from the apparatus to review the details of the operation. In addition, it would be desirable to provide an apparatus that enables the incident commander to quickly assess the status of the situation by ensuring that all necessary data of the operation is available visually without the need to refresh a number of screens.