Incident Management Utility

Started by MattPHS2002, June 10, 2007, 02:37:42 PM

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sschwab

This week in our SONS http://www.freshwaterspills.net/sons07truth/ exercise, we tried to use IMU, and had limited success.  We had a command staff of three MSA, ground OPS, air OPS, IC, a few comm crew, and in addition a couple of Air Force watching over our shoulder.

I am the ITO, plus a computer programmer, part time IT guy, used to networking etc., and we still had the following problems:

1) The MSA, while computer literate, struggled with some of the basics.

     a) The clicking on the RED TEXT to update the "Next of Kin" on the Incident Checkin page was not obvious.  A bit of experimentation resolved it, but my IC had been trying to use the software the previous week and never figured that out.

     b) Our main member checkin computer died, as it was an older PC with a flaky power supply, so we switched to a laptop.  It worked, but it turned out the clock in the first computer was a month off, so we struggled getting everyone active on the same day.  This problem was compounded by checking in people to two different mission bases (just different names) by mistake.  While I don't think this affected anything, it did caused confusion and delays as MSA tried to get everyone at the same base, on the same day.  I think we never did figure out how to switch bases for those checked in. 

        To complicate things, the PC switch happened after crews were dispatched, and at the time we did not think about using the form 60s to check everyone out and back in.

     c) It took a while to figure out how to check people out,  again we had to poke around for awhile.

2) We tried setting up an aircrew on the second day, after the crew was launched, using the 104s the air ops had used.  Since we had problems with IMU the day before, air ops did not want to mess with it when they had planes to get out.  The MSA gave up, trying to translate the information from the paper form to the IMU pages.  I was busy working with imagery at the time, so I am not sure what the exact problems were.

3) We never attempted adding a ground team.

4) There was confusion about who goes into the system, do member activated at home and going to a search get logged in?  If not, how could you add them to a sortie?  If you do, how do you get all the required information to add them to the IMU program.  You could call and ask, but our comm was already overloaded?  I am not sure but I think we ended up calling the GTL cell phones and adding everyone to the system, but this took some time to sort out.

In the end we used IMU just to manage checkin/checkouts and produce head counts and rosters for IC.  We never got to the point of using the status boards for air and ground, which was our initial plan.

Something I never figured out was how to get IMU into a network or virtual mode.  I had one laptop which enabled those options, but I could not get my other laptops to do more then just "local".   We tried sharing the database on a Windows shared drive, but ended up putting just running it off of one system with actual database on a memory stick (in case of another failure).

I have to say the software seems to have a great deal of capabilities, and a user guide could have solved many of the problems.  I also imagine it is a bear to program, getting all the forms up to date and printing proper.  I guess I would be more optimistic about the outcome, except that one of the AF overseers had not walked up to me, on the last day and said "you know a couple of excel spreadsheets could have done all of that."

I don't think IMU impressed many at our mission base, and regretfully some of the MSA where wing staff and they were not happy with it.

Just my 2 cents, but my recommendation to new users is get some training for you, MSAs, and other staff before the mission.



2LT Scott Schwab
Gateway Squadron
MOWING