The disastrous bushfires that swept through Victoria in February 2009 left wide spread damage to property and killed one hundred and seventy three people. The scale of the event provided enormous challenges to agencies responsible for post disaster research, especially that of the building assessment teams. A key component to the successful capture of building data was that detailed information had to be captured quickly and accurately as within days of the bushfires passing building sites were already been demolished and cleared. Previous building assessments on fire affected areas have been conducted using paper based surveys. Due to the number of affected buildings in this instance it was decided a digital system would be far more efficient and accurate.

Data collected digitally provides significant advantages over paper based methods. Information is instantly available in the digital domain and, in this instance, spatial details are also recorded for each record. This allows the data to be analysed shortly after collection which provides advantages such as up-to-date maps and statistics providing information on completed assessments and the location of destroyed buildings.

The digital assessment form used for this event was developed in a very short time frame and deployed to field teams soon after the bushfires. The system was designed to be simple as not all users had previous experience with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The successful uptake of the system demonstrated its ease-of-use and allowed a large amount of data to be captured within a short timeframe. Unfortunately due to a lack of testing and evaluation a number of discrepancies were later found within the system which lead to some errors in data capture. This paper will discuss the development and deployment of the digital capture system used and identify the limitations of implementing it in such a short timeframe.