Public Safety & Mission Software
Emergency Management & Situational Awareness
Software that gives emergency operations centers a common picture.
What this covers
During an incident, an emergency operations center needs to see resources, road closures, shelters, damage reports, and requests in one place. HQT implements and integrates situational awareness platforms and builds the data feeds that keep them current.
Typical activities
- Requirements from emergency managers and partner agencies
- Platform configuration or custom application development
- Data feeds from weather, traffic, utility outage, and sensor sources
- Mobile applications for field damage assessment and resource tracking
- Integration with mass notification and public information channels
- Exercise support and after-action data capture
What you receive
A configured platform with live data feeds, field applications, and documentation aligned to the agency's emergency operations plan.
Considerations for public agencies
These systems must work when normal infrastructure does not. We design for degraded connectivity, offline field capture, and hosting that is independent of the agency's primary site.
Signs the current setup is not holding up
This work usually starts after an activation rather than after a planning cycle. Conditions that justify looking at the platform:
- The last improvement plan listed information sharing, resource tracking, or damage assessment as a corrective action, and so did the one before it.
- Resource requests move by phone and email, so the EOC cannot say what was ordered, who holds it, and where it is without rebuilding the answer from a mailbox.
- Emergency support function desks keep side spreadsheets because the shared boards lack the fields they need, and the status board diverges from the floor inside one operational period.
- Damage assessment arrives on paper or in a format that has to be re-keyed before it supports a preliminary damage assessment or a Public Assistance submission.
- The configuration reflects a hazard profile or an organization chart that has since changed, and most boards go unopened during an activation.
One of these is usually a configuration question. Several together point to integration and data work rather than a new procurement.
Where this sits next to GIS, dispatch, and alerting
Few agencies start from nothing here, and the gaps tend to sit between systems that each work on their own.
- Decide which system is the map of record, usually the GIS deployment, and feed the incident platform from it instead of maintaining a second version that drifts.
- Keep alerting authority separate from software selection. Public alerting through IPAWS requires authorization from FEMA, which involves an agreement with FEMA, a collaborative operating group identifier, required training, and origination software demonstrated compatible with IPAWS. Confirm the current requirements with FEMA and your state emergency management agency.
- Show source and age on every layer. External feeds differ in reliability and refresh rate, and a stale road closure layer presented as current is worse than a missing one.
- Plan for partners who will never hold accounts, such as state EOC staff, mutual aid partners, and elected officials, through a read-only view or a scheduled export.
- Preserve ICS form structure and NIMS resource typing in the data model so state and federal submissions do not need a translation step.
Terms worth settling before award
- Export of boards, forms, attachments, and audit history in a documented format, available on demand and at termination, tested during the engagement rather than billed later as a professional services task.
- Stated behavior when the network, the platform, or the identity provider is unavailable, including how conflicting offline edits are resolved on reconnect.
- A recovery time objective written into the agreement, with failover in a location unlikely to be affected by the same event as the EOC.
- Configuration handover, meaning boards, workflows, and integrations documented well enough for agency staff or a successor vendor to change them, plus administrator training.
- Accounts for partner and volunteer staff provisioned before an activation, with role changes possible during one.
- Retention rules, public records handling, audit logs that stay intact through export, and the accessibility requirements that apply to your jurisdiction.
- For grant funded work, a period of performance that covers configuration, integration, and exercise support, and a procurement route that meets the uniform guidance at 2 CFR Part 200 as your grant office applies it.
Judging the result
Measure against exercises and activations rather than a go-live date. Useful measures include the time from activation to a common operating picture the incident commander will brief from, the share of resource requests that exist as records rather than as email threads, how many function desks still run side spreadsheets after a full operational period, and whether damage assessment data reaches state and federal formats without re-keying. Run at least one drill that assumes the primary hosting site is unavailable and staff are working from the fallback. Over a longer horizon, corrective actions about the software should close and stay closed.
Working with HQT on this
HQT scopes this kind of work as a fixed-price or time-and-materials engagement with a written statement of work, named staff, and a defined acceptance process. We are candid about what we can take on and prefer a well-run project to an oversized one. Contact us to discuss a requirement, a draft scope, or an upcoming solicitation.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an emergency management platform and a mass notification system?
A mass notification system sends messages out to the public or to staff. An emergency management platform is the internal record of the incident, covering objectives, status boards, resource requests, damage reports, and the map. Agencies generally run both and connect them, so the platform logs what was sent and when, while the authority to alert and the tool approved for origination stay where they belong.
Do we have to replace our current platform to get a better common operating picture?
Usually not. Complaints about the common operating picture more often trace back to configuration, missing or stale feeds, and boards that do not match how the EOC actually runs than to the product itself. Look at board usage and integration gaps during an exercise before starting a replacement procurement, since a new platform inherits the same data problems.
Will the system still work if the EOC loses internet or power?
Only if it was designed and tested for that. Ask for field applications that capture offline and sync with defined conflict handling, failover in a location that will not be lost to the same event, and a documented manual fallback such as printed ICS forms with a procedure for entering them afterward. Then test it in an exercise, because a vendor availability claim is not the same as a drill run with the primary site assumed down.
How do we make field damage assessment data usable for FEMA Public Assistance?
Capture the fields the state and federal process requires at the point of collection, including location, ownership, category of work, a description of the damage, photographs with coordinates, and the basis of any cost estimate. If assessors record free text and loose photos, someone re-keys the material later under time pressure and detail is lost. Public Assistance requirements come from FEMA and are administered through the state, so confirm the current submission format with your state emergency management agency and build the forms to match before season rather than during an event.
Can emergency management grant funds be used for this kind of software work?
Programs such as the Emergency Management Performance Grant and the Homeland Security Grant Program are commonly used for emergency management systems, planning, and exercises, but allowability depends on the current notice of funding opportunity, your state administering agency's rules, and the period of performance. Confirm with your grant office before scoping, and structure the procurement to meet the federal uniform guidance at 2 CFR Part 200. Plan separately for how recurring subscription and hosting costs will be funded once the period of performance ends.