Juvare technology harnesses Azure to power emergency response around the world

One of the major challenges that responders face in an emergency is coordinating information between public, private, and healthcare organizations. Emergency managers need reliable, up–to–date information to rapidly deploy resources and make real-time decisions that can save lives when disaster strikes.  

When it comes to empowering that kind of responsiveness, organizations depend on Juvare and their emergency preparedness and response platforms. Juvare has provided integral technology to support global crisis response and management efforts for every major U.S. emergency in recent history, from COVID-19 to wildfires, hurricanes, and massive sporting events, through their scalable cloud solutions called WebEOC and eICS.  

Because hundreds of emergency response organizations rely on these solutions, Juvare built their software on Azure to support global data access and rapid deployment when and where people needed it the most.  

Cloud infrastructure and emergency response support  

While Juvare as a brand name has only been in existence for two years, the core technology and team have been leading the emergency management space for decades. Their primary products, WebEOC and eICS, serve as the glue that brings together private businesses and public emergency preparedness and response agencies. Both platforms have been integral parts of response efforts for some of the most challenging disasters in modern times. 

For example, Juvare worked with the state of Florida to prepare for and respond to Hurricane Dorian during the 2019 hurricane season. Sixty-six Florida counties used WebEOC to manage recovery and response efforts across the state. WebEOC provided real-time and comprehensive data for emergency responders to track the path of the storm, its impacts, evacuation procedures, status of hundreds of shelters, and thousands of other data points. WebEOC also helped seamlessly coordinate thousands of resource requests, emergency messages, and citizen calls.  

Juvare has also supplied its platforms in preparedness for major social events. Juvare worked closely with Atlanta’s Fulton County EMA during Superbowl LIII to set up incident command posts and provide a common operational picture for all stakeholders at the event. AFCEMA used WebEOC to coordinate over 50 separate Federal, state, and local agencies in real-time to maintain situational awareness to protect an influx of over 1 million people in Atlanta over a 10-day period. 

In total, Juvare works with over 600 emergency management agencies around the globe, more than 50 federal agencies, and connects more than 3,500 hospitals and public health departments.  

The key to the power of WebEOC is its flexibility. According to Josh Byrd, VP of Marketing at Juvare, providing dependability and speed is critical for their operations. “Speed, agility, and dependability are vital in emergency situations,” Byrd said. “You have to have a platform that you can depend on in the worst of times because that’s when emergency managers are called upon to do their best work.” 

Bryan Kaplan, SVP/CTO at Juvare, echoed that sentiment. “What we’re striving for is giving our clients the ability and stability to operate, no matter what the crisis or emergency circumstances are,” he said, “but in emergencies, it’s critical that they can operate effectively and efficiently which requires peak performance in less than ideal conditions. Azure helps us do that at scale and with elastic capacity.” 

Their global clients often have geographic data restrictions, so Juvare needed a cloud solution that could serve their solutions from one place. Azure’s global access gave them the flexibility required for that task. Likewise, using Azure SQL and elastic pools provided the capability to adapt to the unique needs of their clients without compromising or disrupting service.  

With solutions built on agile cloud technology, Juvare’s clients are better prepared to respond to the demands of a crisis across multiple sectors. According to Kaplan, Juvare can onboard clients to their platform within a day, something that they couldn’t do without Azure cloud capabilities. They can also deploy dashboards built around specific data points and emergency contexts so that responders are accessing information and making informed decisions as soon as possible.  

Conclusion 

As global emergencies and health crises continue to challenge local, regional, and national communities, the solutions needed to face those challenges need to evolve. Juvare is in the business of innovating emergency response with cloud-based solutions that have been at the forefront of some of the biggest crises of the past decade. Cloud platforms like Azure provide the resiliency and scalability that response efforts call for so that people and resources get where they need when they are needed.