Customer Use Cases – Disaster Management
A first-hand look at how Appenate has helped improve operations
Displaced Coffins Rehomed
This customer needed a digital data-collection solution that could be used across multiple devices and scan barcodes. Once Appenate had been discovered, the US state instilled a process that attached barcodes to coffins and tombs. This new form of identification would aid in the efforts to correctly return them to their resting places as hurricanes and coastal flooding continued to rise.
Previous legislation only advised protocols such as attaching a glass tube with a death certificate or a battery-operated tracker. However, there was no fixed procedure in place. The concerns with these methods were smudged ink in the non-waterproof tubes, funeral homes forgetting to insert the certificates and depleted batteries in the case of the trackers.
The unofficially named “Cemetery App” includes a Form which collects the data of the deceased as well as the corresponding barcode.
Appenate’s offline capabilities are imperative to them during hurricane season as the connectivity is almost always compromised. Whether it is due to power outages, fiber damage, or the cell sites going down, the ability to continue scanning and pulling up important data allows the disaster management teams to continue their efforts uninterrupted.
Apps Used:
Coffin & Tomb Identification: Barcodes that correspond to the information in the app are added to the coffins and tombs before burial.
Graveyard Mapping: Documenting where each gravesite is using GPS as well as who has been buried there saves hours of work when floods displace coffins and tombs.
Permit Application: Cut out the time spent completing paper-based forms for various permits required for burial, cremation, transfers, and travel.
Funeral Home Records: Converting paper-based records to digital forms prevents loss of data when funeral homes become waterlogged.
Submit Obituary: Prevent rejection due to formatting or lack of information required by newspapers. Complete the requirements in the app to save time.
Embalming Checklist: A specific process is followed to preserve bodies that arrive at the mortuary. To prevent any accidents and to maintain accountability, follow and submit a chacklist.
Location Transfer Checklist: Procedures should be followed when transferring across state borders, not only to preserve the body but also to remain compliant with legislations.
Cosmetic Preparation Checklist: The mortician can prevent external reactions to the makeup by following the guidelines produced by the app.
Memorial Service Booking: Prevent double bookings or miscommunication between staff members by using a centralized system.
Mobile Disaster Response
This customer provides government and other organisations with disaster and event management capabilities through their bespoke software product. But they needed more mobile functionality, to keep up with their customers’ migration to mobile devices.
Working with Appenate, the customer was able to rapidly create mobile data collection apps with key functions such as:
Key Functions:
Evacuation Centres: Users can look up nearby centres, and can also update data about centres such as number of people sheltering, stocks of food and operational status.
Road Closures: Council workers are able to record road closure and opening, including details about signage, reason for closure, photos of the impact area and GPS coordinates.
Tasks and Jobs: Users are able to task jobs to mobile field users, providing details about the job, address and routing to the location. The statuses of jobs are updated via the mobile apps back into the disaster management system for real-time tracking of progress and crews.
The customer also engaged our professional services team to design, build and deliver the integration required to plug into the Appenate platform. We duly delivered this project along with branded Android & iOS apps, handing over the integration source code for the customer to maintain and extend as needed.
Appenate’s flexible mobility platform hosting options mean that the customer has been able to host Appenate Server on their servers based in Sydney, Australia. This was a key requirement given data sovereignty concerns from government, with the added benefit of giving full control over the platform, data and continuity aspects. Today the app is being rolled out to local government customers around Australia.
Offline capabilities and the native speed of our technology means that mobile users are still able to access important data and perform other key tasks in the field, even during a hurricane.
