The Development of Job Aids to Support the Use of Field Instruments, Methods, and Techniques by Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Environmental Emergency Personnel

ABSTRACT

Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC’s) Emergencies Science and Technology Section (ESTS) is tasked with providing scientific and technical advice to its federal partners during environmental emergencies including oil spill incidents. In addition, ESTS maintains a wide array of field instrumentation and equipment, which is available to support different areas of a spill response such as detection and monitoring, health and safety, and sampling. During a response, ESTS needs to quickly, and effectively, convey to ECCC Environmental Emergencies Officers what tools and equipment could be available for the response, and how they can help meet ECCCs objectives for the response. This can often be a challenge, especially when ESTS personnel cannot deploy on-site alongside the instrumentation and equipment, as the information must be provided in an easily understandable format, yet thorough enough to ensure proper usage of the particular tool or piece of equipment. To address these challenges, ESTS has begun the development of a suite of job aids or “Tactical Sheets”. Each Tactical Sheet contains necessary, condensed, information on a field method or equipment maintained by ESTS for use at an environmental emergency. The goal of these Tactical Sheets is to highlight what the specific objectives for ECCC are, and how a given piece of equipment or method can help meet that objective at a response. These Tactical Sheets come with a number of features including a standardized format, a visually appealing design layout, a required equipment list, a simplified procedure, and a summary of the typical use for the particular tool or piece of equipment. ESTS has begun trialing these Tactical Sheets at certain incidents throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to increase ESTS’ capability of providing remote support when on-site presence is not an option. These Tactical Sheets are meant to bolster ESTS’ portfolio of support options available to our partners during environmental emergency responses. This paper will present information on the program to update field methods used during an environmental emergency by ECCC. © 2022 44th AMOP Technical Seminar on Environmental Contamination and Response. All rights reserved.