The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games will welcome more than 6,600 athletes and team officials from 70 Commonwealth nations and territories to our sun-drenched Gold Coast and event cities Brisbane, Cairns and Townsville, to share in the celebration of sport, entertainment and culture. This will be the biggest sporting event staged in Australia this decade and will feature the largest integrated sports program in Commonwealth Games history, comprising 18 sports and seven para-sports. Whilst there will be thousands of dedicated athletes, support persons, families and fans attending these events, our dedicated Emergency Services personnel across the state will be working tirelessly to provide the safest environment possible for our visiting guests and our local residents. The heartbeat of this support will be the Joint Emergency Services Co-ordination Centre (JESCC) recently implemented by Pro AV Solutions on the Gold Coast.
The JESCC provides a workspace for over 50 Emergency Services personnel across its two levels. With mobile workspaces, conference rooms fitted with multi-media networking and conferencing facilities, a breakout room for incident management and the extensive use of technology and operable walls to create flexible working environments on both floors, the JESCC is a highly configurable space. It can be arranged to support multiple large-scale incidents as well as smaller event operations. One of the key features of the JESCC is an integrated system offering high speed connectivity to support multiple technologies and systems within the Police Services and across other emergency service agencies. The technology allows public safety agencies to readily use their own technology and IT in what is largely a wireless facility.
Ensuring these solutions remain 100% operational and available in the lead up to the Opening Ceremony and throughout the games period is critical. Pro AV Solutions have been engaged to design and deploy enhanced support services to JESCC personnel during this period so that they can remain focused on community safety whilst we ensure the technology provides the intended functionality. During the lead up to the games we will provide a 1-hour on-site enhanced support guarantee to the JESCC personnel from 6am to 10pm. No mean feat given the changed traffic conditions and influx of vehicles on the road. Fortunately, the team working out of our Gold Coast office will be able to deploy services quickly and resolve issues as they arise.
On the day of the Opening Ceremony our team will operate two shifts on-site working directly with JESCC personnel to respond immediately to issues, changes or any other technology support the team require. A third shift will be on-call during the night when the games activity has completed, effectively providing 24-hour support across every day of the commonwealth games.
Of course, we hope that all our visitors and locals alike have a safe and enjoyable time whilst attending the many and varied activities and showcases that the games bring and in turn the JESCC remains quiet and incident free throughout the period.
