Designa: A system for monitoring and managing the population assisted during an emergency
An analysis dedicated to Designa, established after the earthquake emergency in Abruzzo in 2009, which become a cornerstone of emergency management.
The Designa System,established after the earthquake emergency in Abruzzo in 2009, become a cornerstone of emergency management.
In case of emergency, the people involved may face many difficulties, including leaving home. The most common activities of assistance to the population range from tents to accommodation in hotels and the provision of contributions for independent accommodation.
The bodies called upon to govern these emergency situations have to manage numerous and complex activities, such as the identification of the most suitable types of assistance, the verification of the eligibility to benefit of it, the disbursement of contributions, the payment of accommodation facilities, and the reporting to the higher-level bodies.
The decision to develop a system that would support the management of the various forms of assistance provided to citizens following emergencies was taken in 2010, following the earthquake emergency in Abruzzo in 2009.
Designa was created, therefore, to provide a unique and effective support to individual operators, managers of accommodation facilities and decision makers, allowing them to have a comprehensive and constantly updated picture of the situation and significantly improving the overall management of the emergency, with general positive effects.
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Designa is a system developed by the Department of Civil Protection, in collaboration with the EUCENTRE Competence Centre, for emergency use in the monitoring and management of information concerning the population assisted following calamitous events.
It consists of a specific software, accessible via web, with information collected in a single centralized database, on which operate, at various levels the Components of the National Service of Civil Protection, feeding and querying it according to the authorizations granted to each.
It is a system that allows to monitor the type of accommodation offered to the citizen and his family, track its evolution over time and verify the costs of assistance in real time.
In this way, there are no redundancies, less time and fewer errors, with benefits for all.
The Designa software is a useful, efficient and effective tool: however, in order to be able to operate profitably and quickly, it requires a team of human resources with specific skills and consolidated experience, able to intervene immediately after the emergency, to configure the software, acquire data from different sources - often cleaning and integrating them - to train new users and to support the staff of the various bodies involved.
Designa, is a management software but, also and above all, a System made up of people with specific experience that, through the IT tool, makes the work of officials and managers of accommodation facilities less onerous and, indirectly, reduces the inconvenience to the affected population.
Designa System collects, processes and organises information concerning people assisted following an emergency, allowing to know the assistance path of the individual citizen, of each family unit, of each reception structure and of the entire emergency. The following figure illustrates the sources of personal information and the different types of users.
Strengths of Designa are:
- Uniqueness of the System and data: each user has the same information at his disposal and each change is immediately accessible to all users;
- Customization of accesses and functions available: each user can view/edit only the information pertaining to him/her and has access to specific functions depending on the role;
- Action traceability: for each operation it is possible to trace the responsible user and the moment in which it was carried out;
- Usability: the user can access the System with any device (PC, Mac, tablet, smartphone) connected to the Internet and equipped with a browser.
The Department of Civil Protection realized Designa and made it available to the components and structures of the National Service of Civil Protection dealing with the assistance to the population in emergency: national and regional Civil Protection officials, local authorities, volunteers, managers of accommodation facilities.