Texas WebEOC Interoperability Project (TWIRP)

The Texas WebEOC Interoperability Project is a project designed to promote the use of WebEOC through Texas. WebEOC is a software program that, according to the National Institute of Justice's 2002 survey, met all requirements for what was deemed necessary in regards to Emergency Planning and Crisis Management.

The State of Texas' Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council for Trauma (STRAC, Trauma Service Area P) recognized that WebEOC would be a crucial component to successful management of problems on a regional and state level. To that end they created the Texas WebEOC Interoperability Project (TWIRP) whose task was to ensure that WebEOC was integrated statewide to the fullest extent possible.

The fact that, until the TWIRP project, no plan existed to construct a statewide or even region to region communication method that allows near real-time seamless tracking of patient and other first responder data was cause for concern in Texas. As STRAC had invested time and money into their Trauma Service Region, it was a natural progression to allow the rest of the state to benefit from what we have learned.

By allowing STRAC to help join all WebEOC servers in the state of Texas in a more uniform and process-oriented way, communication will be able to flow up and down the echelons of control and allow for after action corrections in areas so that we become progressively better at our mission. The impact that the successful completion of this project will have is evident from the local perspective all the way up to the state and federal levels.

A new website for TWIRP is under development and will be released in the not-too-distant future. It will be located at http://www.twirp.org/