Description
A great many business tasks are performed on computers today. After the 2007 Southern California wildfire events that wrought wide-spread damage to the area, event assessment of the efficacy of spreadsheets and paper forms raised the question of whether alternative tools could have achieved greater efficiencies in the logistical support of command centers, the sites from which the local utility's electric restoration personnel were deployed. The purpose of this study was to examine what approach would have enabled personnel working on the logistics of the command center effort to have easier-to-use, faster-to-access, command center data stored in, and provided via, a catastrophe resilient platform other than the traditional company computer network. Additionally, the capability to store basic command center requirements from previous emergency responses, to save time during the next emergency, was examined. The results of this action research acknowledged the 25 categories of the spreadsheet tool as potentially transferable to an alternate tool. The action research suggests a need to apply the spreadsheet data in a practical format that would aid efficiency of the personnel supporting the logistics of the command centers. This study proposes a continuation of this research to develop specific alternatives that would be more effective in handling the logistics of emergency response and electric restoration activities.
