Queensland’s disaster response team has been armed with Cloud-based GIS technology and they’re never going back. There are more people than ever before in the path of wild weather, and the Queensland government has taken steps to improve their ability to act quickly. Ditching their old manual methods of reporting, they’ve adopted Gruntify.

Gruntify is GIS People’s flagship product and provides a platform for team members in the field to acquire and upload data in real time. Queensland Government saw huge potential for Gruntify to be used in their rapid damage assessment following disasters, and the platform was set up to meet just that purpose for them. When Tropical Cyclone Debbie swept down the Queensland coast in March this year, the Gruntify technology was really put to the test.

Critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges and power lines were damaged up and down the state. To assist with quick recovery, the Gruntify mobile apps and web platform were used to collect evidence of this damage, document it, and prepare reports, so that recovery and reconstruction activities can be expedited. The recovery operation is still ongoing and Gruntify is an integral part of managing that process.

Miles Vass, Deputy Director General for the Department of Transport Queensland, called the application elegant, adding, “I’ve been leading the department’s agencies response to disasters now for about seven years. The response this time was probably the most organized and ordered that I’ve been involved with the whole time.”

Gruntify is built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Through GIS People’s partnership with Microsoft under the CityNext program, the technology giant heard about the exciting work that the Brisbane-based company have been collaborating on with Queensland Government. Microsoft loved the project so much, they decided to film a case study. This led to a film crew flying out from the USA to Brisbane, where they conducted interviews with Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, the Deputy Director General of the Department of Transport Queensland Miles Vass, and GIS People’s CEO Jamie Leach, who spoke about Gruntify and the work that that has been done in Queensland.

The Microsoft production crew also filmed the GIS People and Queensland Government teams in action, using Gruntify in the field and in the office. This filming opportunity has given GIS People the chance to show the world what Gruntify is all about, and how this platform can be used to make lives better.

This article was originally published by Spatial Source.

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