News Release
Sentinel Systems Ltd. is finalist for two KIRA awards (News)
April 26, 2010
John Pollack
For the Telegraph-Journal
When Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Danny were ripping up the east coast last August the Canada Games organizing committee and P.E.I. Department of Public Safety were keeping an eye on the weather as they celebrated Canada's youth athletes.
The storms left some unfortunate fall clean up of flooded basements in the Maritimes, but didn't disrupt the games.
But if Bill and Danny hadn't lost their steam before hitting Atlantic Canada, the province and the games were ready to evacuate the area and deploy emergency services with a couple clicks of the mouse.
For 18 months prior to the games the province and organizers were preparing for the worst. To make sure they could respond quickly in case of an emergency, they purchased incident management software from Bathurst-based Sentinel Systems Ltd.
"It didn't change our process, (but) it provided us a vehicle for improved access to the information," said Aaron Campbell, director of the P.E.I. Office of Public Safety. "That really put us in a more capable position to provide timely information to the agencies that would respond in the event of an actual situation arising."
The software helps municipalities and governments determine what kind of disasters, whether natural or caused by humans, pose the most risk to a region through a series of questions.
"They customize (the software) themselves as they're answering the questions," said company chief executive Denis DesRosiers.
When a potential disaster is approaching the local emergency operations center can watch the event on the map as it approaches and send out a message to any parties that could be affected they have contact info for.
"They receive a phone call like they would normally and they receive an emergency message," he said, adding the message can also be sent out over SMS (text message), cellphone, email or fax.
The system can also send out instructions for teams to deploy emergency resources, such as sandbags to prevent basements flooding, with the click of a button.
"When they need the equipment they know where it is, they know who has it and they know how to effectively go get it and bring it to the field," DesRosiers said.
And if the situation gets out of control municipalities can call for backup from neighboring communities, or the province - all from the web-based application.
Once the emergency is over the system can play back every command entered, so the responders can determine if anything could be done better next time.
After launching the product in 2008, the Sentinel system has been deployed in 30 municipalities in New Brunswick covering two-thirds of the population, as well as in all the provincially run emergency command centers.
The firm, which incorporated in 2007 while developing the product, has been named a finalist for two KIRA awards: most promising start-up and private sector innovation.
"It's kind of an aspiration of an IT company to win a KIRA," DesRosiers said.
"We're absolutely tickled pink (to be a finalist)"
Though DesRosiers said he doesn't expect every municipality will ever come on board, he expects to have most of the Maritimes covered by the system within five years with municipalities in other provinces adopting the software in the process. The Bathurst firm is already talking to jurisdictions in Ontario and Quebec and its ambitious leader is eying the rest of the North American market as well as Europe and Asia.
"Our strategy is to partner with companies that already sell technology to local and state governments and through those channel partners export to those markets," he said.
For that kind of expansion the firm will have to bulk up its person power beyond the team of three, and DesRosiers is looking to hire more sales and support staff for the planned operations extension.
Like any software company Sentinel is also improving the system with every bit of feedback they get and may have to expand its development team as well.
"We're constantly evolving the tool to make sure our customers aren't getting lost," he said, adding purchase of the system comes with a day-and-a-half orientation though the software is designed to look like everyday applications such as email and Google maps.
"Our goal is a person sitting in an EOC (emergency operations center) without any previous training can sit there and use the system," he said.