TRRC On-line Incident Reporting
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 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 has been progressing rapidly since approval to proceed was given last October. The system is now ready for the pilot trial in the Region.
The objectives of the trial are 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.
The ARA, on behalf of the Water Safety Working Group [WSWG], have agreed to purchase the data for its own purposes, offsetting some of the Region’s costs in commissioning the work.
Some general comments
- The system is intended for reporting incidents of a general nature, to both the region and, if you so wish, to the PLA (save the pdf file and send as an e-mail attachment).
- You will need to establish that what you are reporting is bad navigation / behaviour / any non-reportable incident, as at present you will not be able to use the on-line system to report ARA reportable incidents.
- The system is set up for reporting incidents on the tidal Thames BUT you can, and should, use it for all the Thames by adaptation as indicated on the drop-down menu – simply use the tidal Thames drop-down bar, put in the text box as appropriate to say where you are and ignore all ‘locations on the Tideway’. This will suffice until the EA (and other) parts of the Thames Region are covered by the system as planned.
- 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, we want to hear about it! If you don’t know who, it does not matter that much but when and where is vital!
- Any grounding needs reporting along with any minor damage. You name it - we want it reported and recorded using the right categories so the data can be collated and lessons learned.
- This 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 is a trial and it 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