Falck
For more than 24 years Sirius IT has managed development and maintenance of the control centre system, which is the life nerve in Falck’s emergency service.
With more than 5 million requests a year it is important that the system works 24 hours a day all year round. No requests must be lost. Fast and secure distribution of tasks is crucial in the situations, where seconds can mean the difference between life and death. In these cases the system can even automatically send a crew totally without manual interference.
The system – EVA.net – has undergone several development phases to be at the forefront of the technological development and the possibilities, which it opens.
EVA.net is an example of classic Application Management, where Sirius IT in cooperation with Falck has developed the solution and maintains, further develops and adds new functionality. Since the development of the first system in 1984 Sirius IT has headed design, development and test of the system.
What does the System do?
In average Falck receives more than 13,000 requests about tasks to solve every day. The requests vary from fire extinguishing and ambulance assistance to emergency service for motorists and transport of patients.
Some requests are telephoned in, others are received electronically. All requests are registered in EVA.net either automatically or by an assistant entering information into the system. The requests, which Falck receives electronically, come from the alarm net (112), voice response or from the internet.
When a request is registered in EVA.net, the system advices the Falck assistant of nearest available crew and vehicles to solve the assignment. On accidents and fire the system can select and dispatch crews totally without manual interference, thus saving valuable seconds, and Falck can be at the scene at optimum speed.
Furthermore, the Falck assistant can have overviews via the system, giving him the total outline of vehicles and crews and current requests under execution. The system ensures Falck the optimal benefit of its resources, while serving the customers as fast as possible. Seconds can be the line between life and death.
Falck has 5 control centres distributed all over Denmark – one control centre in each region. The control centres have crew and equipment from more than 130 Falck stations at their disposal.
Stability and Security is a demand
As Falck often receives requests, where life is in danger, it is vital that the system is stabile to the maximum. This means that at no time there must be breakdowns or interferrences in the operation. The system must be in operation around the clock – all year.
Established routines are incorporated for adding new functionality. First the new functionality is thoroughly tested by Sirius IT and Falck. Consequently it is tested for at week, and any errors are corrected before the new functionality is put into operation at the other control centres.
Daily Operation and Development
The service of the system is performed in close cooperation between Falck’s IT department and Sirius IT. Sirius IT has an established group of developers, who continuously maintain and further develop EVA.net. The close cooperation with Falck gives a well-functioning Application Management process.
For a number of years Sirius IT has used Lithuanian developers for the system, which reduces development costs.
The Construction of the System
EVA.net is third generation of the system. This generation was started in 2005 and is based on Microsoft’s .NET platform. The goal is to achieve an up-to-date and scalable technology, which partly ensures faster and easier development and partly creates the possibility to distribute the system to Falck in other countries.
EVA.net includes facilities to send text messages to the customers; to receive information about tasks via the internet, voice response and the alarm net; to display task information via GIS; and to execute radio communication, for instance to data radio, GPS, call systems and text pagers.
The system is a client/server system, where the server is written in ASP.NET, which is hosted by Microsoft IIS and accessed via web services. To obtain the maximum operating stability the server can be distributed over a web-farm, which ensures the system to operate even if a server breaks down. The user interface consists of a Windows client, and the system is developed by use of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server.
