NSW RFS conducted a three-day Incident Management Exercise (IMX) on 21-23 July 2015 at two locations: Queanbeyan Fire Control Centre and Braidwood Administration Office.  The IMX required responses to three simulated bushfire incidents -- Goorock Range, near Captains Flat;  Macfarlanes, west of Harolds Cross and Old Timberlight, north-east of Nerriga  -- each running  for the entire three days.

IMX Organization Structure consisted of an Incident Management Team  (Operations, Planning, Logistics) and an Activation Cell (Fire Intelligence, Emergency Operations Centre, Major Incident Controller, Council reps, NSW Police  etc).

MAPS Volunteer David Haycraft filled the role of Mapping Unit Leader at the Queanbeyan FCC throughout the exercise.  He used the new ESRI ArcMap implementation of the NSW RFS MapDesk app for the first time outside the classroom. 

With MapDesk he periodically entered geographic incident data provided by  the Activation Cell (Air Observer burnt area polygon SHP files, map references to spot fires) and by Planning ( active/inactive fire edges, proposed control lines, Emergency Alert areas etc).    Frequent MapDesk editing tasks encountered included:  converting an external SHP file containing a polygon into a Fire Boundary polygon and a Fire Line polyline;  splitting an active Fire Line into active and inactive segments , converting a 6-figure map reference into a Fire Point.

The Mapping Unit compiled and printed approximately 100 A0 and A3 printed maps for the Incident Management Team and uploaded the latest maps of the three IMX incidents to the ICON system at https://icondemo.rfs.nsw.gov.au at the end of each shift.

DMH :         Sun 26 July 2015