Situate Me launches new welfare add-on to register unattended animals

Livestock owners who are not on the farm, or have to leave, when disaster strikes are able to register their unattended animals with Ema.

Situate Me, the emergency management crowdsourcing specialist, behind compassionate Virtual Disaster Assistant, Ema has launched a new animal welfare add-on that allows farmers and lifestylers to register animals left unattended in an emergency.

Livestock owners who are not on the farm, or have to leave, when disaster strikes are able to register their unattended animals with Ema. Ema takes the farmer through a series of conversational questions to establish species, stock numbers, gender, special needs, as well as any dangerous and anti-social characteristics. Farmers are also able to give location details of feedlots, water troughs, loading pens and other resources on their farm, which would assist emergency responders when attending to their livestock.

From a cloud-based dashboard, local authorities and government departments who have installed the platform can gauge the scale of the operation in advance of heading into a disaster zone. Emergency responders can view mapped data to assess the extent of the unattended animal issue and plan how best to prioritize check-ups, feeding, milking, rescue, and re-location.

Rob Gourdie, Situate Me's co-founder, says the unattended animal bot (a first for the emergency management industry) will transform the animal welfare effort in an emergency situation. He adds that the operational impact of Ema's help for authorities will be huge.

"'Ema for Animals' captures livestock data at the moment it is actually needed and Ema's questions can be adapted 'on the fly' to gain specific details on behalf of the emergency responders. This avoids the overhead of trying to maintain the integrity of a very large set of data over the years, for the day it is finally needed. Experience has shown that confidence in historical data in emergencies is often quite low and often ignored in favor of more immediate ways of gathering data."

With Ema, hundreds, even thousands, of farmers can enter information about affected livestock simultaneously; with the data being up-to-the-minute accurate.

"For livestock owners, 'Ema for Animals' fulfills a significant emotional need. The extra stress and anxiety that worrying about livestock (and livelihood) add to an emergency situation cannot be underestimated. Importantly, being able to quickly register unattended livestock may prevent concerned animal owners from breaking through cordons and putting themselves in danger in an attempt to reach their animals.

Situate Me launched the Unattended Animal Registration Bot ('Ema for Animals') at the 58th New Zealand Institute of Animal Management conference held in Wellington, last week.

Situate Me is now inviting local councils and emergency management groups to evaluate the unattended animal situational awareness tool with a view to including it in their preparedness resources.