​The Mapping and Planning Support (MAPS) group is established to provide a mechanism for Spatial Professionals to assist the ACT Emergency Services Agency during complex emergencies as volunteers. Learn more about MAPS early days.

This fantastic group of volunteers have assisted not only with emergencies in the ACT and region, but also interstate. 

The Mapping and Planning Support (MAPS) group are geospatial or GIS professionals who volunteer under the ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA) to assist in providing mapping and GIS support to emergency incidents. ESA provides MAPS volunteers with training, systems, financial, administrative and leadership support.

The name MAPS was chosen as an acronym that describes the work undertaken. It also gives an indication of where the personnel sit within an Incident Management Team under the Australian Inter Agency Incident Management System.

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The ACT ESA has an ‘all hazards’ focus, thus MAPS members can find themselves assisting with all kinds of emergency situations. Training on GIS use for all hazards is available so that MAPS can function across all emergency service agencies. When deployed, MAPS is attached directly to the Incident Management Team rather than a particular RFS Brigade or SES Unit. Most of the work MAPS perform is around major bushfires, searching for missing persons and during damaging weather events.

MAPS members produce maps to suit the incident and the environment they are in. These may include fire incident products such as a state wide map showing location of all current fires, a localised fire map showing area burnt with current fire edge, expected fire edge and control operations. Other incidents may require a map showing properties affected by an incident such as flooding and specific search area maps for Search and Rescue.

We also support RFS air observers to assist them in mapping the current fire front, hot spots, remote sensing etc. The ESA operates a very user friendly ESRI based mapping system which most spatial professionals will master with minimal training.

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View our MAPS Deployment dashboard

The volunteer group has up to 50 volunteers including the leadership team.

In 2020 the leadership team structure changed to:

• Executive Members (2)

• Coordinators (4-6)

• Mapping Leaders (up to 10)

• General members.

MAPS volunteers are geospatial professionals as opposed to fire experts.  The MAPS “call me when needed” member register lists up to fifty volunteer members including ten supervisors.  These volunteers are geospatial professionals from the ACT region, either retired or working in the private or public sectors.

They undertake specialist training twice a year in:

• Emergency Incident management systems – where mapping fits, who is in charge, etc

• NSW RFS software -  the ICON incident management system, the MapDesk GIS mapping program, RFS spatial data catalog

• Software used by other emergency management agencies.

View our members dashboard​

• Fill an on-going weekly Duty Callout Roster

• Lead deployments

• Manage the membership register

• Organise training, documentation, protocols

• Undertake further training in bush fire fighting, RFS systems, command and control, etc

• Additionally, the two Executive Members attend regular coordination meetings with ESA

• Current list of the leadership team

MAPS works by developing partnerships and relationships with emergency management agencies and organisations. During deployment volunteers embed themselves within the operations section of the partnering organisation. They then seamlessly provide GIS and map production support during the emergency. This could be at any major emergency across Australia. 

MAPS Volunteers were first deployed to an Emergency Incident in December 2006,  when two foundation members provided bushfire mapping services to NSW RFS at the Tumut Fire Control Centre.  

Since then our Volunteers have provided a total of nearly 1100 person days of assistance to emergency service agencies across eastern Australia.  For more information see the report MAPS Deployment Days By Emergency Incident extracted from our MAPS Management database.

View pictures of deployments.

View our MAPS Deployment dashboard