WebEOC is already used by three of the largest cruise lines worldwide, six international carriers and three of the top four largest airlines in the United States, including Delta Air Lines.
“WebEOC has become an essential tool in our incident preparation, response activities, response to incidents and deploying family assistance,” said Jana Thomas, emergency operations manager at Delta Air Lines. “The release of the Air & Cruise module will allow us to be able to better deploy our employees to assist families and/or the investigation during an incident and have better reporting capability.”
The Air & Cruise module was designed for ease of use and custom application to the travel industry. Features allow users to build common display views, rely on standard reports and deploy entire teams of employees.
Air and cruise lines may be faced with a number of different scenarios in which they would benefit from the deployment of WebEOC and the Air & Cruise Module.
Intermedix provided an example scenario for Homeland Security Today:
An airline may be forced to make an emergency landing due to a mechanical issue or security incident. During the landing, the aircraft is unable to stop and runs off the landing strip resulting in major injuries, possibly even fatalities.
In this scenario, WebEOC assists in the immediate response to the incident by allowing on-site staff to report status updates and activities ongoing at the scene of the incident. This allows the Operations Command Center to get a clear understanding of the challenges and needs on-site. In addition the tool also assists in providing much needed info for future updates to family/friends on passengers and crew statuses.
The new Air & Cruise Module specifically enables the airline to upload its manifest quickly thus allowing airline inquiry centers the ability to more promptly respond to calls and deploy their special assistance teams. These team members then utilize the module to assist survivors and family members in the immediate aftermath of an incident.
WebEOC is configurable to the air or cruise lines’ response process and can also be used to assist in recovery and investigative phases of an incident. Damage assessment reporting and aircraft maintenance records can be stored and shared internally in the system.
WebEOC is perhaps best known for itsuse during hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and in the aftermath of the Boston marathon attacks, where the Massachusetts Hospital Association cited it the most effective tool in dealing with the incident.
