Sandy, UT — Disaster management, preparedness, and response is more effective and significantly more manageable at Herriman City, Utah, utilizing Cityworks by Azteca Systems, Inc., the leading provider of GIS-centric management solutions. Herriman merged the software with their emergency management plans by preparing emergency request templates to gather information about the disaster and generate reports for FEMA in the event of a possible disaster. The City has greatly benefitted from the peace of mind this level of preparedness offers.

After selecting Cityworks for its Public Utilities Department because of its GIS capabilities and easy-to-use format, Herriman became familiar with the software’s capabilities and quickly recognized it as a possible component of their emergency management system. The City began using Cityworks for their mock disaster drills in the spring of 2009. Since then, Herriman conducts biannual drills where they use event layers created from service requests to graphically view the issues associated with the disaster. The City reformatted forms from Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) to create different event layers using emergency templates in Cityworks. They also set up emergency procedures helping them identify the state of emergency and what kind of response was needed, all tracked with Cityworks. The drills provide valuable feedback which helps them identify additional needs and refine their workflows.

“Before we had Cityworks, trying to gather this type of information and store it in one location was virtually impossible,” reports Steve Brown, ITS Manager at Herriman City. “That’s why Cityworks is such a natural fit for this need. We can bring up the location of an emergency on the GIS map, prioritize it, and respond to it accordingly. It is extremely nice to have a centralized database and one source of input where all our information is collected, whether remotely or in office.”

Cityworks helps Herriman identify resources, costs, time spent, and other details pertinent to disaster response. Once a crisis is officially declared a disaster by state or federal government, reimbursement money becomes available for needed resources if a municipality has tracked resource information with the records to back it up. Cityworks creates an easy way to account for and track resources and produces viable information to provide to government officials, enabling the maximum disaster cost reimbursement. The City is also moving to using work orders to track labor, material, and equipment costs for FEMA reimbursements.

“The ROI (Return of Investment) aspect Cityworks provides us in this area is incredible,” declares Brown. “It gives us a sure way of knowing that all our expenses will be reimbursed if we have a disaster situation. This alone is one of the biggest benefits Cityworks provides us because the amount of money we could save in the long run is huge. It’s like an insurance policy - a small price to pay for the tremendous savings we will incur should we ever have a large-scale disaster. We have the comfort of knowing that we are covered in a disaster as far as money goes, thanks to Cityworks and the management capabilities it provides, and that is worth a lot.”

“The way Herriman has incorporated Cityworks into their facets of emergency management is truly remarkable,” states Brian Haslam, President of Azteca Systems. “We’ve seen similar results in several agencies, where Cityworks makes disaster response so much easier, more effective, and helps ensure FEMA reimbursement should a disaster happen. Because of its flexible nature, Cityworks is customizable and configurable for so many different possibilities, but utilizing it for emergency response is certainly among the more vital and gratifying.”