Queensland surf life savers recently swapped orange-and-yellow skull caps for propeller-head caps, as part of a high-tech bid to curb a surge last year in tourist drowning incidents on Gold Coast beaches.

Lending brains rather than brawn to the task of keeping South-East Queensland's often treacherous surf beaches safe for sun lovers, they collectively volunteered thousands of hours to help upgrade Surf Life Saving Queensland's (SLSQ) Burleigh Heads surf rescue communication centre, SurfCom.

Peter Dawes, Operations Manager at SurfCom, said the project would bring the standard of technology at the communications centre in line with Queensland police, ambulance and rescue services. So far the operation centre's radio and telephone communications have been integrated via a sophisticated computer-aided dispatch system and SLSQ plans to improve the system further over the coming months.

Cutting against the grain of the popular Australian stereotype, Dawes said that many had been surprised to hear that volunteer life savers themselves customised the software underpinning the dispatch centre systems. Their work has attracted the praise and interest of Queensland Police, Ambulance, and Fire and Rescue services who were on hand to contribute their expertise to the upgrade project.

"Obviously, one of the benefits of a volunteer group is that they bring with them pre-existing skills and in this particular project some of our operators brought pre-existing computer skills," said Dawes.

Thus far the new system, which SLSQ commercially values at AU$350,000 to $400,000, has been built at a modest cost, largely due to the civic spirit of the community it serves. In addition to time volunteered by surf rescue club members, it has received donations of infrastructure and expertise from other quarters of Queensland's emergency service community. Zetron, the company that supplied key pieces of communication equipment for the system, provided labour and project management expertise at no cost.

It is hoped that SurfCom, a project expected to be repeated for the Sunshine Coast surf life saving operation, will help address a recent jump in drowning accidents involving foreign tourists on south-east Queensland beaches. According to SLSQ, there were 12 international tourist drownings in the region last year, jumping markedly from the local average of three.

SLSQ said it expects the new system to improve its ability to respond to emergencies and manage its volunteer rescue teams dispersed along a 70 km stretch of coastline between Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta.

The new system lets SurfCom operators and surf lifesavers conference directly with police, ambulance and rescue services, linking the SLSQ's radio network with conventional telephone services. Dawes said the system helps lift the operators' burden of coordinating the rescue team while acting as a radio-telephone go-between.

SurfCom, still in its infancy, currently allows operators to know which life saving teams and craft are radioing in but has limited ability to trace their locations. SLSQ is currently testing Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment that it plans to place on its Jet boats, Jet Skis and a number of its Inflatable Rescue Boats (or IRBs) for integration with the dispatch system.

"The minute they hit the button we'll know who they are and where they are," said Dawes.

A recent rescue incident in which a boogie-board rider was swept about 1.5 km offshore demonstrates how critical this capability could be during an emergency.

"In that case our jet skis went out and rescued him...with a GPS system we will be able to identify exactly where the jet ski is and hence exactly where the patient is," said Elissa Keenan, SLSQ Public Relations manager.

According to SLSQ, South East Queensland's surf life savers conduct around 3000 rescues a year, more than any other teams in the state, responsible for patrolling stretches of beach that are often unmanned and heavily populated with inexpereinced tourist swimmers.

Protecting those swimmers could play a significant role in protecting Queensland's economy as it will help ensure the safety of one of the state's biggest industries, tourism.

"I think, particularly in the Asian [tourism] market, if there is a drowning, they tend to talk about it a lot in their local media back in their relevant countries," said Keenan.

Dawes concedes that there was an unusual number of drowning incidents involving foreign visitors -- which he blamed on visitor education problems -- but even here he said SurfCom will be able to help.

"We can better track and respond to trends because information is being recorded at the time of the incident. We can start to act on it literally from the time we spot a trend", said Dawes.

Under the old system surf life savers would have to have waited until the end of the year to analyse data on drowning accidents. The new system, which records data instantly, lets SLSQ review how many life savers and craft it is despatching weekly and take an approach to patrolling the surf that is proactive rather than reactive.

The operations centre's database keeps operators informed of manning levels at each club location and can despatch resources to where they're most needed before disasters happen.

"Clubs are calling in incidents and they know how many people are on each beach at different times...if they think there's a greater need for jet boats in a different location, they can send the jet boats to that location before somebody asks for them," added Dawes.

SLSQ was unable to provide an estimate of how many lives it anticipated might be saved by the new system, but for Dawes it would take little to justify the time, effort and money invested in SurfCom.

"We're trying the number of lives lost down to zero, particularly during periods when there are patrols and a response is available, so we look at any investment that potentially saves -- even one life -- as having a value to us".

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