The City of St. Albert has been honoured with the prestigious Federal Provincial Territorial Emergency Management Exemplary Service Award for Resilient Communities by Public Safety Canada on February 26, 2025 in Ottawa, Ontario. Seven employees under the leadership of Mark Pickford, Manager of Emergency Management were recognized for their work: Brian Carabine, Alice Cerqueira, Denise Isbister, Shawn Kirkpatrick, Marci Ng, Cara Parenteau, and Kendra Verheul. 

This award recognizes the City’s groundbreaking advancements in emergency management and celebrates the City’s innovative efforts to enhance public safety, preparedness, and resilience within St. Albert.  

The key City projects that earned this recognition are:  

• “Know Your Zone”: Revolutionizing Public Safety 
  • This project utilized ArcGIS mapping technology to divide St. Albert's 30 neighborhoods into evacuation zones. It has resulted in Alberta’s only interactive evacuation and shelter-in-place map, providing near real-time updates on critical safety information for our residents. See the St. Albert Evacuation/Shelter-in-Place map at stalbert.ca/evacuate. 
  • The City also developed an education campaign on the “Know Your Zone” map that  included targeted mailers to all households in St. Albert, social media and media relations. This effort strengthened residents’ abilities to “Know Their Zone” and helped increase resiliency and knowledge should an incident occur.  
• Census Data Collection: Enhancing Demographic Understanding 
  • St. Albert’s Evacuation/Shelter-in-Place map uses census data that is meticulously layered to assist the City’s Incident Management Team and first responders in understanding demographics within each of the evacuation/shelter-in-place zones.  
• Everbridge Mass Communication System: Transforming Emergency Communication 
  • The City’s new mass emergency notification system, Everbridge, was customized to enhance coordination and collaboration during emergencies. This platform ensures timely notifications for City staff, significantly bolstering the City’s ability to respond to diverse threats.  
• Rapid Damage Assessment Tool: Streamlining Recovery Efforts 
  • This tool integrates census and tax data to quickly and accurately identify damaged properties and displaced populations. Successfully tested in an exercise, it optimizes resource allocation and recovery services, reducing errors and improving response efficiency.  

These initiatives demonstrate St. Albert’s commitment to leveraging technology and fostering community engagement to improve emergency management and public safety.  

Learn more about the Emergency Management Exemplary Service Award for Resilient Communities from the Government of Canada.  

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Related Pages

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