Background

1. Public safety is an important issue for coastal management and planning.

2. Despite continued efforts, coastal drowning continues at unacceptable levels.

3. SLS has many systems in place to collect, analyse and communicate information.

4. Maintaining this information is very resource intensive.

Objectives In order to address these issues SLSA has developed a suite of low cost, high tech, location based tools. These tools are used for a range of applications including, public education, data collection, event risk management and coastal public safety risk assessment.

Methods

BeachSafe

A website and location based iPhone app containing information on all of Australia's 11 900 beaches. The application is backed by the ABSAMP Database, developed jointly by Prof. Andrew Short (University of Sydney) and SLSA.

Event Risk Management Application

Every year SLSA conducts the Australian Surf Life Saving (SLS) Championships This event has more competitors than the Commonwealth Games and is held in the most unpredictable of environments, the beach. SLSA has developed user friendly, guided, risk management tools for the iPad. This application is currently used at the Australian SLS Championships providing real time information on the ever changing risk levels to the event emergency services.

Coastal Public Safety Risk Assessment Application

SLSA provides commercial risk management services to local government and other organisations as required to mitigate coastal public safety risk. SLSA has developed a ground breaking enterprise tool for this purpose that revolutionises this service. This application allows for the rapid collection of data and instant reporting, as well as validating and updating data in contained in the ABSAMP database.

This presentation will illustrate how SLSA is addressing coastal public safety issues using these cost effective and efficient applications.