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Waze Australia Virtual Emergency Operations Centre (VEOC) - Active
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What is a Virtual Emergency Operations Centre (VEOC)?
“An emergency operations center (EOC) is a central command and control facility responsible for carrying out the principles of emergency preparedness and emergency management, or disaster management functions”.
Inspired by the Waze USA VEOC operated on a Discord server, allows Waze community volunteer editors, Waze Staff and Waze Partners, to gather and provide a coordinated response to disasters / emergency situations using the Waze platform, with the aim of improving public safety.
Modelled by both the Waze “Crisis response community white paper” and the Waze USA VEOC, Waze Australia is trialling a reduced scale VEOC, staffed by volunteer editors on the Waze Australia Discord server. It was first activated in September 2019 in response to Queensland and New South Wales bushfires to direct Waze app users away from danger and to evacuation centres.
What is the situation?
The ongoing bush fire crisis on the eastern states of Australia has worsened. At the time of writing, a record number of emergency warnings are in place in NSW (https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/major-fire-updates) with conditions not set to improve.
How can volunteer community editors help?
The VEOC requires editors of all levels to participate to be successful. Volunteers are required to contribute local knowledge, search data feeds for evacuation centre and road conditions, input data into the data systems for action, implementing/editing/removing real-time road closures.
To get started, join our Discord server.
All editors
- Contribute to the Discord VEOC chat #veoc-general
- Search data feeds and the internet, or use your local knowledge on road closures and evacuation centres
- Report information about road closures in the #veoc-closures-<state> channel for action by a state manger or higher
- Report information about evacuation centres in the Waze Crisis sheets spreadsheet available shortly.
A level 4+ editor / Editor with closure permissions
- Create “crisis” massive traffic events and publish where missing
- Add real-time road closures to roads reported in #veoc-closures-<state> channel
Local editor / Editor with “Crisis Editing Area”
- Add and update relevant places to the map (such as venues that are used as evacuation centres)
- Link places with “external provider” results and update entry points
- Identified emergency shelters, even if not active, can have category “emergency shelter” added
- Read the rules