TRRC On-line Incident Reporting
Amended, 1st December 2008.
As stated in the TRRC Annual Report 2006, the Thames Region has, in conjunction with the ARA Water Safety Working Group, designed a pilot project for the on-line reporting of both good and bad navigation / behaviour / general incident reporting, for all vessels on the River Thames.
IT specialists, Thoughtspace Ltd were commissioned to effect the design, and work progressed rapidly since approval to proceed was given in October2006. The system has been in operation as a pilot trial in the Region since February 2007 and was sucessful sucht that the ARA has followed suit and set up their own version which came online on December 1st 2008.
The objectives of the TRRC trial were as follows:
- To make the reporting process as easy as reasonably practicable on-line (given the constraints of the cost of the IT)
- Greatly to increase the percentage of incidents / near misses that are reported.
- To use these data, collated by the system, to obtain the statistics and trends on incidents and poor navigation / behaviour
- To use the statistics to aid the effort to improve safety in the Thames Region and help indicate where resource should be be directed to best effect.
Some general comments
- The system was intended for reporting incidents of a general nature, to both the region and to the PLA (by saving the pdf file and sending as an e-mail attachment).
- The system was set up for reporting incidents on the tidal Thames BUT also catered for all the Thames by adaptation as indicated on the drop-down menu by simply using the tidal Thames drop-down bar, putting in the text box as appropriate to say where you are and ignore all ˜locations on the Tideway. THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE BECAUSE, AS OF THE 1st DECEMBER 2008, ALL REPORTS ARE NOW ARA ON LINE ONES.
For near misses/incidents in PLA waters, please report both on the ARA and the TRRC on line reporting systems until such time as we can organise an integration into the ARA system as we hope will be a future development:
- We are interested in every near miss, even those which you would normally consider as silly or unimportant. If you had to easy or hold it up hard because some unmentionable individual or crew was crossing the river in the wrong place, the ARA want to hear about it! If you don't know who, it does not matter that much but when and where is vital!
- The TRRC one line system is not just for rowers to report rowers. It is also to report other river users - now is your chance to comment on the courses of Police launches or cruisers (and theirs to report on you!)
- This will be developed to cover other areas. We will later develop the ability to pinpoint locations on maps or charts. Be patient and please give constructive feedback to me on how easy/difficult you found it to use and suggest improvements wherever you can.
Chris George