For over 10 years, Genwest has realized the importance of accurately tracking personnel and equipment responding to an emergency incident.  In a demonstration of its commitment to the response community, Genwest participates in regional response resource equipment workshops.  Out of this participation, Genwest developed a “proof-of-concept” website (www.wrrl.us) that provides a means for regional Oil Spill Response Organizations to post their equipment inventory and status to a common database where the data is combined into downloadable files for planning and response purposes.  For example, the database now serves as a regulator-accepted means for a facility to document available response equipment in the event of an incident.  Also, the State of Washington uses this data to verify response times for equipment listed in a facility’s response plan.
  To take advantage of the data available at the www.wrrl.us website, Genwest developed a stand-alone system for on-site response equipment tracking.  This system, known as Ecard, is based on ICS-specific resource tracking methods even to the point of printing out T-cards if desired.  Ecard provides near real time equipment tracking combined with the ability to summarize equipment status on ICS-standard forms (ICS-209, for example). The primary advantage of using Ecard is that is provides instantaneous assessment of the actual amounts of equipment deployed at an incident at any given moment.  It’s a great tool for demonstrating to regulators that the Responsible Party is mounting an adequate and sufficient level of response.  Ecard has been successfully used over the past 5 years or so in drills and incidents such as the Hurricane Katrina response.