Loomio
Wed 14 Oct 2015 1:20PM

Submission 1: Rocky Mountain Rescue Group (RMRG) App

SR Shadrock Roberts Public Seen by 260

RMRG is regularly called to perform extractions for injured hikers, rock climbers, mountain bikers and skiers. Mountain rescue calls are widely variable in terms of location, difficulty of extraction and volunteer needs.

RMRG is a staffed by a team of 70 volunteers, not all of whom are needed at every call. The more seamlessly leaders can coordinate those volunteers, the smoother the team functions and the more effectively we use our volunteers' time.

Currently, RMRG uses a legacy system of digital and voice pagers to call out volunteers . We propose an app to coordinate mountain rescue response.

This app will be useful during several phases each mission. Prior to RMRG being called out, the app can be used by a member to declare themselves fully or marginally available for response during the day/workday/night. This information is critical as it tells mission leadership how many people are available to respond on a given day.

Once RMRG is paged for a 911 call and the mission starts up, the app would turn itself on and alert the member that we have been paged. The app would be able to handle multiple missions.

Once a mission has been paged out, members can indicate response and a mapping component would show the location of any members responding. With this, leadership will know not only how many people are responding but their approximate location and estimated time to arrive at the scene. One added bonus of the mapping component is that people can coordinate carpools.

Success for this app would be success in a beta-testing period followed by adoption and widespread use by RMRG leadership and members. This UR tech challenge could not have come at a better time since many members and leaders of the group have expressed interest in this functionality.

SR

Poll Created Wed 14 Oct 2015 1:27PM

Will this idea improve resilience in Boulder or strengthen citizen engagement? Closed Sun 18 Oct 2015 5:07AM

Please provide your feedback on what you think about this idea!

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Agree 85.7% 6 JZ SR GM AT VA PW
Abstain 14.3% 1 RH
Disagree 0.0% 0  
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 38 AOL ER MH SB RS BK RR SC SJ KH SA BR SN AT TS AG ES KK SDC RH

7 of 45 people have participated (15%)

PW

Page Weil
Agree
Wed 14 Oct 2015 1:54PM

This concept has a clear and measurable goal as well as a community partner that is ready to adopt the technology. This will have the most impact in terms of improving resilience both in the near-term and moving forward.

VA

Violet Alexandre
Agree
Wed 14 Oct 2015 5:57PM

This seems like a good idea that is directly tied to an immediate need in the community with the potential to improve resilience.

AT

Aaron Titus
Agree
Wed 14 Oct 2015 9:39PM

Clear, well-defined, and attainable. It is likely that core components of this app have already been developed in the open source community, and should be re-used if possible. Concern: Cell phone networks are not designed for first response.

JZ

Jennifer Zawacki Thu 15 Oct 2015 12:53AM

Fantastic! Lots of need in our active community. I'd be interested in learning more about the app's functionality when out of network range.

SR

Shadrock Roberts Thu 15 Oct 2015 2:27PM

I'm happy to see such a clearly defined use-case and local organization and this clearly speaks to the theme of volunteer coordination. I think using existing open-source components to build this would be great. I also think addressing network concerns and having a blue-sky scenario for other ways this could be adopted or used would be helpful.

AOL

Angela Oduor Lungati Wed 21 Oct 2015 6:22AM

Delayed response here :).

Very well defined usecase and goals. I'd also be interested in the app's functionality outside network range, and how you would mitigate those challenges.