ESTA – Saving Time, Saving Lives

The Emergency Marker infrastructure program is a world first initiative for saving time in emergency response to 000 calls and ultimately save lives.

Determining caller location is the most critical piece of information used by emergency call takers to dispatch emergency personnel and resources. This is a fundamental requirement for the operation of any modern Emergency Call Service and apart from the actual call itself, is the next most vital piece of information, since without it, Emergency Service Organisations (ESOs) may be limited in the level assistance they can offer to the caller.

The Emergency Marker program has been championed by ESTA (Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority) in partnership with Ambulance Victoria, Parks Victoria, Victoria Police, Victoria SES, and Life Saving Victoria to assist in pinpointing the exact location of an emergency in large open spaces like public reserves, river trails and national parks where reference points are hard to find.

RapidMap, Iconyx and ESTA designed and implemented a highly innovative mobile spatial data collection and integrated spatial information management solution for the rapid rollout of Emergency Marker Infrastructure. The Markers’ data is collected on the principle “collect once and use many times” including:

• Making the state-wide dataset available to other users in the DSE Spatial Data Mart
• Identifying errors on VicMap which are notified using the DSE Notification Service
• Ensuring the landowners like Parks Victoria can use the data in their asset management systems

Focusing on interoperability across corporate systems has inspired the expansion of the Triple 000 call service into regional areas, while delivering significant side benefits. ESTA now has more than 2,900 emergency marker locations identifiable to call-takers in the Computer Aided Dispatch system.