Disaster management centers in South Africa are using software called Uniti, developed for coordinating emergency response during the 2010 World Cup, to now coordinate response to xenophobic attacks. Uniti allows over 350 disaster management workers across organizations to share information in real-time. It has helped log and track seven reported incidents of xenophobia in the Western Cape. Officials praise Uniti for improving response time and enabling improved monitoring of xenophobic incidents across municipalities and provinces. The software facilitates communication between emergency responders and is being expanded to help manage displaced persons in refugee camps.

1. Published in the Cape Argus by Maureen Marud 8th December 2010
DISASTER management centres around the country are using software developed
for the World Cup to coordinate a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral approach to
xenophobic attacks and their consequences.
The need to manage the risk of disasters during the World Cup prompted the
Western Cape Disaster Management Centre to ask Cape Town ICT company,
Umoya, to devise a web-based platform that has since streamlined emergency
communications country-wide.
Known as Uniti, the software helped more than 350 disaster management workers,
including command and control centres, to share real-time information that provided
up-to-the minute readiness to deal with any eventuality during the World Cup, said
Peter Beretta of Umoya.
“The National Disaster Management Centre has procured the program for
operations in all provinces, where it is being used by Disaster Management
themselves, as well as elements from the police, Red Cross and other government
entities,” said Beretta .
Mlungisi Gongqa of the National Disaster Management Centre in Pretoria
confirmed yesterday that seven incidents of xenophobia in the Western Cape were
already logged into the Uniti program.
Hailing Uniti as a “major milestone”, Gongqa said: “For the first time in the history of
national disaster management we are able to network with everybody across the
country, and improve response time.
“We can report and analyse situations more quickly. We are already plugged into
Uniti in all the provinces so it will be easy to pick up xenophobic incidents as they
arise from municipality to municipality and from province to province.
“We will use Uniti to log in every incident of xenophobia, and will follow up on every
one of them, no matter how small.”
Andre Harrison, also of Umoya, said the provinces would use the program to
capture information of incidents, their location and description, so that trends could
be identified and co-ordinated.
“Although Uniti was developed for the World Cup, it has legs beyond that. To help
the country cope with attacks and their consequences, the system is being
developed further to make it more specific for the needs that arise out of the
displacement of people. As these events occur, the software is able to develop in
synch with what is happening.”
Beretta said Uniti facilitated communication between line functions like police,
ambulance and fire services, and was already being used by some district and local
municipalities, including the City of Cape Town.
The management of refugee camps was being developed to link all the camps and
their managers, who could communicate with each other easily and quickly.
“Camps that have the Uniti software will, because of their integrated
communication, be able to register the refugees in and out of camps, keep full
biographical details of displaced persons, and provide accreditation details of
NGOs, social workers and people working in the camps.
“The software also facilitates the transferring of people between camps. It is able to
link family members in different camps. Part of the software is a web presence that
allows details of missing persons to be published on the website.”

2. Uniti’s core is the thousands of contacts it provides of individuals in all areas able to
respond when disaster threatens.
“A centralised address book of all relevant disaster management, police,
emergency services, defence force and fire department staff makes it possible to
reach the relevant person when necessary,” Beretta said.
“Your data base gives you the name of the relevant individuals, contact details and
photographs of each. All you need do is click on ‘call’, and the program dials your
landline or cell phone while calling the other person.”
The software provides the ability to listen in on or join two-way radio talk groups,
voice recording, situation report logs, a forum for text conversations, and a web
intranet facility for posting alerts, updates and images. It also plots recorded
incidents using Google Maps.
“It is already being used daily for communication between Disaster Management
and emergency services. The program allows everyone to know when and where
anything is happening. We get several hundred entries a day from users,” Beretta
said.
“We have designed it so that it is mobile. You can access it from your cell phone or
a laptop and it is rapidly-deployable anywhere because it is a hosted application
and only requires access to the internet.”
It takes two hours to train someone to use the system, he said.
Jackson Rikhotso, Western Cape provincial deputy director responsible for disaster
preparedness, said the software “helps us to get accurate information for proper
decision making”.
“It contributed to the smooth running of the World Cup,” said Rikhotso.