INFORMATION

The Smart Beaches Project includes the development of a Lifeguard Reporting Tool available for use by all lifeguarding services in NSW. As part of the tender specification we need to describe the data to be collected. That’s what this review tool is for. We want to know if we have the right data, the right categories and the right balance of detail vs ease of collection. This information may also support the development of a wider Coastal Safety Data Standard that can be used by other applications and in-house systems.

WE ARE EXPLORING THE DATA TO BE COLLECTED AND THE OPTIONS AVAILABLE. THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS AN EXEMPLAR APP FOR OPERATIONAL USE.

Use Cases

As with any data collection activity it is important to understand how the data will be used. The Lifeguard Reporting System has four main user groups with eight use cases:

LIFEGUARDS

• Record the provision of lifeguard services

• Details of the service provided to support any inquiry following injury, misconduct claims etc.

LIFEGUARD MANAGERS

• Conduct Coastal Risk Assessments to determine the lifeguard service levels required.

• Support funding allocations to maintain or improve capabilities provided (lifeguard services, equipment and training)

RESEARCHERS

• Improve the methodology for evaluating risk at coastal locations

• Improve the methodology for evaluating risk of various beach-goer groups

PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS

• Communicate beach risk and amenity to the public

• Communicate lifeguard service provision to the public

Mandatory v Optional Data

These use cases are listed in a descending order of importance (from a lifeguard app database perspective). We are following a principle of obtaining the minimum data necessary to meet each use case in that order (i.e. data required to record the details of service provided will be more important than data to support communication of amenity to the public. In most cases, data can support multiple use cases. This results in a small “mandatory” set of data that meets the primary use case, followed by optional data sets to support the other use cases. In the forms used here responses are either set as “Mandatory” or “Optional” to reflect this approach. In any finished product, Optional responses could be hidden or omitted based on the preferences of the service.

For Coastal Risk Assessments the current best practice methodology is the “Lifesaving Service Level Analysis” as described in the Australian Coastal Public Safety Guidelines.

Post code and ethnicity data has not been included in the data set. This is based on the assumption that it would not be practicable for lifeguards to infer this information or to regularly obtain it. your thoughts on this assumption are welcome.

Glossary

As with any data set it is important to ensure definitions are clear and well understood. A glossary has also been provided for review and feedback.

Demo limitations

In the forms used here responses are either set as “Mandatory” or “Optional”. In any finished product, Optional responses could be hidden or omitted based on the preferences of the service.

Each section asks for a report date and time. This is an important change from end of day summary reporting currently in use by many services. This provides far more accurate data to support all use cases. However, the recording of this information is somewhat tedious in google forms. This could be streamlined in an app allowing for auto-fill and for multiple events to be recorded with the same date/time.

Google forms also doesn't allow for number-only responses, 'short answer' is the closest option and is suitable for the purpose of this trial.

Reviewer Comments

Each section includes a “Reviewer comments about this section” question which is your opportunity to provide feedback about that section. You can also provide feedback by emailing me at info@coastalsafetygroup.com.au