Flash Flood Response Setup

Create or open your org coordination board. Confirm org name, time zone, and primary response area. Time zone matters because urgency scoring and stale-case alerts are computed against your local time, not the submitter's. Set the response area polygon (or named region) so geo-matching favors local resources first.

• Org profile filled in (name, time zone, primary region)
• Logo uploaded — appears on PDF reports and the public intake page
• Default urgency thresholds reviewed under Settings → Triage

Add every shelter, clinic, sandbag pickup point, food site, and water distribution point you expect to use. For floods especially, add the boat launches and high-ground rally points. Bulk-import via CSV (Resources → Import) if you maintain a spreadsheet — column names map to the AidGrid schema automatically.

• Each resource has address (so geocoding works) and capacity
• Status set: green / amber / red based on today's reality
• At least one resource per need category you expect (shelter, medical, supplies, transport)

Copy the public intake link from Settings → Intake and distribute via SMS blast, partner orgs, posters, and your social channels. If you have a dispatch line, add the phone-call coordinator role so call-takers can enter cases on behalf of callers. Decide whether photos are required — for floods we recommend optional photos so submitters under stress can still submit fast.

• Public intake link tested from a real phone
• Call-takers given the 'coordinator' role and walked through the dispatch form
• Intake QR code printed and posted at staging areas if applicable

Open Settings → Triage. For a flash flood event, lower the life-safety threshold by 5-10 points — a stranded vulnerable person scores higher when water is rising fast. Confirm the duplicate-detection window (default 4 hours is right for floods). Decide who gets paged for 90+ urgency cases.

• Life-safety threshold reviewed and adjusted for current event
• On-call coordinator(s) added to the 90+ urgency notification list
• Stale-case threshold set to your shift length (typically 8 or 12 hours)

Bring the whole team into one place (in person or video) and walk the queue together. Show how to triage, route, refer, and resolve. Assign zones to specific coordinators so cases route by geography instead of first-grabbed. Set the next briefing time — every 4 hours during active response works well.

• Every coordinator has logged in and run through one practice case
• Geographic or category ownership assigned
• Next briefing time on the team's shared calendar

At the end of each shift, run Reports → Coordination Summary for the period and save it as a snapshot. After the response, run a full incident report and export to PDF for partners, funders, and after-action review. Archive resources that were temporary (pop-up shelters) so they don't pollute next time's directory.

• Shift snapshot saved in Reports → History
• Final incident report PDF exported and shared with partners
• Temporary resources archived, permanent ones updated with lessons learned