Hello!

The following items were covered at our September Technology Work Group meeting:

• The group welcomes Gabe Lavine from the City of Sugar Land as a new co-chair. He will replace Lach Mullen, who is stepping down from his co-chair role after many years of service to this work group. We thank Lach for his work over the years and look forward to Gabe continuing the work group’s mission.
• Technology administrators provided updates on regional systems.
  • Fort Bend County expects the new Jetty administrator to start on Monday 11 October. In the interim, continue to send any issues to Rodney Grimmer.
  • CJ Pacheco is working with TDEM on STAR board issues in WebEOC and will pass along any updates once they are received. The WebEOC Work Group is also continuing revisions to the WebEOC Governance and hopes to conclude that process in the near future.
  • Will Alvis and Nicole Ceranek are continuing their work with the Regional GIS Server. They are currently working to connect the portal to the regional WebEOC server and are in contact with Juvare to address some technical issues with synchronization uncovered during this process. They will also host a GIS Work Group meeting on Wednesday 13 October at 10:00 am via Zoom. Please contact Will or Nicole to be added to the GIS Work Group list.
  • Ian Feldman advised that there were no system updates to report for Haystax but he is working to add more GIS layers to the map, including the state’s pSTAT and iSTAT damage assessment layers, but is encountering some limitations in Haystax’s map viewer that could limit the usability of those layers.
• The group also reviewed the Technology Training appendix to the regional Integrated Preparedness Plan (IPP), which was formerly known as the Multi-Year Training and Exercise Plan.
  • The classes required for IPAWS administrators and message originators in the AlertFM section were updated to the current versions.
  • Additional detail was added to the GIS section regarding exiting ESRI data collection apps such as Survey123, but an in-depth update to this section will likely wait until the next revision to allow the GIS Work Group more time to provide input.
  • Some edits were made to the Jetty training section to reflect the fact that Jetty guidance is built into the system, and that individual sites are developing their own guidance/how-to documents.
  • The WebEOC section updates will wait until the WebEOC Work Group concludes its governance revisions so the two documents can be in sync.
• Ian Feldman asked the group for suggestions on non-grant funded technologies that are commonly used in the region to include as part of a list in the UASI On-Boarding Guide that is currently under development. For example, SETRAC manages EMTrack and EMResource for medical patient and evacuee tracking and hospital and medical system status. Suggestions of other systems like this that should be considered for inclusion on such a list should be sent to ian.feldman@houstontx.gov by Wednesday 13 October 2021.
• The next meeting will be Thursday 28 October 2021 at 1:00 pm via HSIN Connect. Presentations are TBD.

Thanks!

Gabe and Ian