There's little that can be said about volunteer-based operations that's universally true, but we can say that;

1. Many perform an urgently-needed, challenging public service,
2. Often with a low - often zero - budget, and
3. All too often, much of the stuff the team uses is paid for by team members out of their own pockets.

When something as fundamental to effective team operation as a dispatch tracking/management solution is needed, teams either rely on the creativity of their members to devise solutions, or else learn to live with the limitations of, as an example, the famous 'yellow-sticky' system. Either way, precious hours are diverted from the mission at hand and the job gets even tougher.

If this sounds like your operation, there's a good reason for it; there's a lot of you out there.

So, when a free, Open Source CAD software product called Tickets surfaced, a number of teams looked hard, and liked what they saw. One of these groups was NEOMRC, the Northeast Ohio Medical Reserve Corps (NEOMRC). They are a group of volunteers dedicated to serving the Northeast Ohio area by providing medical support services for various public events and can be activated in the event of an emergency. They provide pre-hospital care and/or communications support to the general public, participants in fund raising activities for other non-profit charitable organizations, and assist local Fire Departments and/or EMS Agencies in the event of a disaster and other assignments that affect the public health.

One event that puts the members of NEOMRC to the test is the "Ohio-Bike MS: Pedal to the Point" event. For those not familiar with the event, it attracts over 2000 riders who pedal a two-day journey that encompasses a nearly 80-mile route each day, from Cleveland to Cedar Point (see bike route map below). NEOMRC has been providing medical support services for the Ohio-Bike MS event for nearly 20 years. To cover the event they have approximately eight to ten mobile response units on the road during that weekend. To keep track of unit locations, all of the units use the Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS). APRS is a system which uses amateur (HAM) radio to transmit position reports, weather reports, and messages between users. There is software available to take the data received locally and make it available via the Internet.

Coordination of all of this is performed at a temporary command post called "Net Control Station". In the past, keeping track of all the units and incidents has involved the use of paper maps and a lot of plain old writing paper. 2007 marked the first time Tickets (or any computer based CAD system) had been used. One of the unique characteristics of Tickets is its portability, making it very useful for working special events. To help get Tickets ready for the event Arnie Shore, the lead developer of the Tickets Project, was able to incorporate the APRS system into Tickets. There were other tweaks that were performed as well to get Tickets ready to run, and those have found their way into the current version of Tickets.

The weekend of the event started off nice, with clear skies and warm temperatures. Sunday however turned nasty, with downpours and temperatures in the 50s. According to EMT-B T.J. Powell, Chief and President of NEOMRC, "We had a lot of problems with hypothermia and other related problems." However, Tickets helped to get units where they were needed, and kept track of all of the responding units. "It was extremely useful and we are extremely grateful that this was available to us." They were also able to use Google Earth to plot the locations of the Response Units on top of the maps. Then when the rains came, they were able to overlay the National Weather Service Weather Radar on top of all of it. "It was a very useful to us to track everything," Mr. Powell stated. And when he was asked if they would be using Tickets again he said, "We plan on using Tickets again this August!"

Click on the graphic for larger image

Matt Hayes KC8BFN (Left) & Jeff Garvas N8YNR (Right)	Doug Dever (N8VUR, EMT-B, NEOMRC Communications Officer)
Close-up of Weather Map	2007 Ohio Bike-MS Route
Tickets in Action

Here are the links to organizations mentioned in the article

Automatic Position Reporting System
http://www.aprs.net/

Northeast Ohio Medical Reserve Corps
http://neomrc.org/

Ohio-Bike MS: Pedal to the Point Ride 2008
http://bikeoha.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?fr_id=7821&pg=entry

Open Information Systems for Emergency Services Project (Open ISES)
http://openises.sourceforge.net

Open Source CAD Discussion Group
http://groups.google.com/group/open-source-cad?hl=en

Tickets Open Source CAD Project
http://openises.sourceforge.net/tickets01.html