Disaster Zone Podcast: ‘Integrating Technology into Rapid Damage Assessment and Recovery’

In the immediate aftermath of a disaster one of the primary tasks for organizations of all types is to perform a rapid damage assessment. The basic need is to obtain situational awareness. Where are the problems? What is the type and nature of the damages that have occurred or are still occurring?

Knowing the above gives organizations, both public and private, the information they need to start responding and orchestrating the logistics needed to sustain that disaster response and eventual recovery.

This week’s Disaster Zone podcast, “Integrating Technology into Rapid Damage Assessment and Recovery,” covers all the above topics. My guest comes with a wealth of experience based on responding from an electrical utility perspective. We discuss the challenges of moving away from paper to digital solutions that have the ability to capture all the data organizations need to better respond and recover.

Here is the podcast description:

“Melanie Spring has over 18 years of experience in engineering, operations, continuous improvement, organizational change management, and business transformation, primarily in power and utilities. Having just moved to consulting, her focus is now on helping organizations grow and transform by adopting improved business processes and finding new ways of working, enabled by technology investments. In her time at a large public utility, Melanie held a number of storm positions in addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, including leading damage assessment, crew management, restoration strategy, and resource logistics. Melanie served as the Louisiana Incident Response Logistics Chief for her utility for several years, including the historic 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season in which five storms made landfall in Louisiana.”