How many times have you been involved in a post-event hotwash or debrief where the theme of “better communications and information sharing” has come up? The answer to that is probably almost all of them.

When it comes to sharing information for critical life-saving decision making and timely accurate situational awareness, there is no “one size fits all” common operating picture (COP) tool, despite what all the IT consultants and software vendors would have you believe.

Emergency and disaster management is far more complicated today than it used to be. There are more players with their own information systems in the game than ever before, and they are all demanding timely, accurate information for their critical life-saving decision making. They also have a bunch of valuable trusted information to share. Connecting all those business practices and information silos can be an overwhelming but necessary task.

Often, the smaller players are left out of the larger COP systems because the costs of belonging or participating can be quite high. But in emergency and disaster management, you should be an equal.

Being part of a good common operating picture for disaster or emergency management can make you that equal but you need to better understand how, why and where your organization will fit into it. You need to know what value there is in belonging, and what value you can bring in to the bigger picture decision making for situational awareness.

You need to start asking a few questions.

What’s Different About Innomergence?

Right about now you might be asking “Why choose Innomergence? Why wouldn’t I just go with one of those larger firms with their standardized “one-size-fits-all-cut-and-paste emergency plan templates and staff with big city operations experience?” You might have just answered your own question…sort of.

At Innomergence, we speak small community and big government emergency management fluently. We’ve been there at site command. We’ve been there in community emergency operations centres. We’ve been there in the larger government operations centres as well. We’ve been at the highest level strategic planning tables. We know that your biggest challenge is often sharing critical, accurate, and timely information between all the stakeholders and support agencies. And we know that a “one size solution” doesn’t fit all.

At Innomergence, we’re not too interested in just coming in and doing a job. We’ll probably come if you ask us, but we’d rather come in and help set you up for short and long term success. Our success is when your community led response and recovery organizations are a success and where critical information sharing to save lives is the norm, not the challenge. To us, it’s all about helping you develop capacity so you don’t have to call us next time…unless you really want to.

At Innomergence we know that you should be an equal player in Emergency Management, no matter how big or small your community or organization is. And we know that with good information sharing in place, you can be that equal.

What is the True Cost of Poor Planning & Information Sharing?

How much is it costing you right now to have  outdated or inefficient emergency response and disaster recovery plans in place?

How many disaster victims are not receiving the relief that they need? How many people are suffering?

How much time is it taking your organization to help those in need, because of poor communication and/or information sharing practices?

A lack of efficient operating procedures in the case of disasters may already be costing you a great deal more than the money you spend in some budget commitment each year.

Give us a call and we’ll see if we can help you out. Our contact info is below.

Steve Newton

President & CEO

Since my earliest childhood memories, one of the strongest values that my parents instilled in me was to help others. I remember at an early age walking around the neighborhood with a wagon full of pumpkins for sale just before Halloween to help a family who had lost their home in a landslide. I think my siblings and I raised about $11 to donate.

Fast forward and I find myself recently retired after 30 years serving the public in some form or another of emergency management. Helping others is what I do. After a thoroughly enjoyable and motivating career in emergency management response and recovery serving the people of British Columbia, and with the full support of my wife Fiona, in May 2018 we  started Innomergence Solutions Inc.

The name Innomergence is a hybrid of the words “innovation” and “emergent”. Combining them was Fiona’s idea and it speaks to two of my primary career passions: (1) creative, innovative systems thinking with a future lens; and (2) embracing emerging challenges with enthusiasm. Those who know and/or have worked with me will agree that this pretty much sums up what I’m about.

My career began about 50 pounds ago when I started out on a wildfire initial attack crews. Exciting and fun times for sure. Over the years, I progressed through the ranks and gained experience in just about every operational position in the British Columbia Wildfire Service, including Incident Command, Operations and Planning roles on the Provincial Incident Management Teams. (I might have put on a couple of extra pounds over the years as my wildfire career advanced). My final 4 years in the BC Wildfire Service was spent leading the Provincial Aviation Management Section.

I have worked with some incredible people. I’ve learned from the best, many of whom worked for me. I participated as a field operations expert in some interesting technology projects supported by the Canadian and European Space Agencies. I was also fortunate enough to be the only field operations member of an 8-person team that developed the wildfire program for the State of Sabah in Malaysia, and part of a small team that designed and delivered an extensive wildfire training program to the State of Nuevo Leon in Mexico. (my Spanish is still a bit rusty)

For the last 7 years of my public service career, I worked as a Regional Manager for Emergency Management BC (EMBC), which is the Province of British Columbia’s primary agency for coordinating all government support to First Nations Communities and Local Governments. When I wasn’t providing daily guidance and subject matter expertise to our many friends or sitting as Director in one of our 6 provincial regional emergency operations centres, I was engaged in projects related to the application of enabling technologies to demonstrate that the elusive true common operating picture for emergency management already exists. And just for kicks, over the years I pursued graduate studies in leadership and strategic foresight. More recently, I’ve been engaged in studies about data science because I absolutely see its value in the future of emergency and disaster management.

A couple of highlights in my career certainly include being the recipient of the first ever Director’s Award for Mentorship (2006), a peer nominated award in the BC Wildfire Service. In October, 2018 I was part of a small team that was awarded the Premier’s Award for Excellence for work done supporting First Nations Communities and Local Governments in the then-historic flood and wildfire events of 2017. I was a volunteer fire department member for 3 years in a small town before I moved on, and sat on the provincial executive of our national Civil Air Search and Rescue Association for 6 years. At the end of the day, what really matters to me the most is that I am able to help others to the best of my ability.

At Innomergence, we know that you should be an equal player in Emergency Management, no matter how big or small your community or organization is. And we know that with good information sharing in place, you can be that equal.

Steve Newton, President, Innomergence Solutions

“What got you here won’t get you there“