Edward Swete Kelly has been to pretty much all of the major music festivals and events in Australia. Unlike most of his fellow attendees, Ed has attended as a paramedic and in crowd-safety roles. It’s certainly afforded him a unique perspective on the running of major, crowded events.
“Within these crowded spaces you’re dealing with a wide variety of incidents, from medical emergencies to threats to crowd safety,” he says, “when drugs and alcohol are added to the mix, and consideration is added for the current environment, you get a whole other set of incidents that can come out of that.”
Ed’s seen his fair share of these incidents over the years. After one particularly tragic incident, Ed started to think about how incident management and response could be handled much more efficiently.
“At the time I was working with the QAS (Queensland Ambulance Service),” Ed revealed, “My colleague, Daniel Kuhn was with the QFES (Queensland Fire and Emergency Service) and we were talking about how what we do at work could be applied within the crowded environment.”
That kernel of thought was the beginning of Chronosoft . The flagship product, Chronicler, allows control rooms to share data, GPS track key staff in the field, monitor and log incidents as they occur and ultimately minimise risk to patrons.
“We knew we could use the same principles of what we within the public sector to enhance event organisers‘ ability to deliver their duty of care to the highest standard,” Ed said.
“We don’t try to change their operations. Instead, our solutions can be adapted, tailored and customised quickly and easily to fit on top of any existing control room.”
“It provides them with accurate, time stamped incident reports, useful data reporting and medical integration.”
Chronosoft flagship software, Chronicler, is already being used by massive events such as Splendour in the Grass, The Falls Festival and Tough Mudder. It was even used by 1300MEDICS during the recent Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
As Chronosoft continue to evolve to include more tools, Ed and his team are committed to their goal of making every event as safe and enjoyable as possible.