Safety App Of The Week

May 4, 2015 No Comments

Below is this week’s “Safety App of the Week“.  Every Monday we publish an article that reviews and rates a new workplace safety app.  Our testing is done on Apple iPads and Samsung Galaxy Tab 3s.  We rate each app from ♥ to ♥♥♥♥♥ (♥♥♥♥♥ is the best).  Prior app of the week articles are archived here.

Disaster Preparedness Guide

Official Description  

“Hurricane? Earthquake? Wildfire? Please Be Prepared!!! A MUST for all iPAD Owners!! No Ad, instant on, instant reference, completely offline. Remove the fear of unknown. 1 minute to download this app, quickly find any information before, during and after any disasters. Do it for your family, friends, and for yourself.

This app is an adaptation of the 200-page “Are You Ready?” guide by FEMA. This app is designed with family and school in mind and takes full advantage of the iPad, turning the guide into rich media format. Some of the highlights are:

-Menu Driven: a few taps will take you to the exact page you wish to read
-Offline: run completely offline with minimal battery consumption
-Global Search: search by topics or keywords and find all relevant information quickly
-Separation of Pages: convert into 200 separate PDF pages, load faster, read easier
-Email: direct email any page, note, image, longitude, latitude information to family & friends
-Audio Annotation: you can annotate each page with your own voices, in any language
-Video Supplement: you can add video from other sources, or record directly from device camera
-Image Addition: add images from multiple sources, including doodling
-Customization: rearrange your presentation, add new information, present in a slide show
-Build your own family plan: document supplies, communications, shelters, escape route, etc.
-Build your school, business or community plan: teach students, neighbors and employees
-Use Video Mirroring to teach a large group of people (iPad 2 only)
-Activate location based service to document all local shelters for later offline use
-Document all your important records, password protection included
-In-App Browser: support online research to keep yourself informed of the latest information
-Self Demo Mode: and automatic slide show to be deployed as kiosk or unattended display
-And more….

Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness is FEMA’s most comprehensive source on individual, family, and community preparedness. The guide provides a step-by-step approach to disaster preparedness by walking the reader through how to get informed about local emergency plans, how to identify hazards that affect their local area, and how to develop and maintain an emergency communications plan and disaster supplies kit. Other topics covered include evacuation, emergency public shelters, animals in disaster, and information specific to people with disabilities.

Are You Ready? also provides in-depth information on specific hazards including what to do before, during, and after each hazard type. The following hazards are covered: Floods, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Thunderstorms and Lightning, Winter Storms and Extreme Cold, Extreme Heat, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Landslide and Debris Flows (Mudslide), Tsunamis, Fires, Wildfires, Hazardous Materials Incidents, Household Chemical Emergencies, Nuclear Power Plant, and Terrorism (including Explosion, Biological, Chemical, Nuclear, and Radiological hazards).“¹

 

Thumbs Up

• cost is free
• no instructions, but navigation is intuitive
• lots of good information on natural disaster planning and hazardous materials incidents
• while most safety professionals don’t have responsibility for terrorism planning – if you are one of the few who does, you will find lots of good information on terrorism preparedness here

 

Thumbs Down

• the font is too small and hard to read
• not very visually appealing – few photos or graphics
• about half of the content related to disaster planning at home

Overall Rating

• iPad / iPhone  –  ♥♥♥
• Android –  not available
• Overall – basically just a reprint of a pretty good 190-page USA FEMA governmental publication on disaster preparedness

¹ Description courtesy of  iTunes

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