Global engineering and specialist technical services firm Aurecon has designed an Intelligent Incident Management Portal (IIMP) for the Chris Hani District Municipality (CHDM), in the Eastern Cape, to assist in dealing with community concerns regarding service delivery and incidents.

The Disaster Management Act requires every district municipality to establish a centre that coordin- ates responses to and planning around incidents, with the proposed Road Incident Management System policy to support incident management and reporting being approached in a coordinated and proactive manner.

To ensure compliance with the Disaster Management Act, the CHDM commissioned Aurecon to develop and implement solutions for the municipality’s Information Management and Communication System project. One of these solutions is the design and implementation of an IIMP.

“With the recent advances in cloud computing and virtualisation, technology is now more user friendly and affordable than ever. IIMP enables multiple municipal entities and emergency services agencies to log on to a centralised portal, through the Web, which houses the various modules supporting the municipal shared services environment,” says Aurecon project manager Rene Pearson.

The IIMP includes multiple functions, such as a Web-based geographical information system for the monitoring and sharing of spatial information. This system includes an advanced document management system, business intelligence tools and dashboard reporting, as well as a mobile application that enables community members to capture any incident in real time using a cellphone.

The IIMP system designed by Aurecon is modular, scalable and readily replicable to suit a client’s specific vision and budget. It will, therefore, ensure that the CHDM can meet and exceed the required level of service by the public.

“Centralising a host of functions across several municipal departments through the IIMP enabled Aurecon to assist the CHDM in saving costs and achieving major improvements in service delivery by integrating emergency and nonemergency services into one well-designed virtual location,” says Pearson.

She adds that the streamlined shared-services solution of the IIMP enables users to access various functionalities from anywhere in the country using a computer, laptop, cellphone or tablet.

As a result, Pearson states that having seen the effectiveness of the IIMP for the CHDM, many municipalities are taking a novel approach to dealing with general inquiries and requests for assistance.