Open ADMS is an automated debris management system (ADMS): the system of record for a debris mission after a hurricane, tornado, wildfire or flood, from the disaster’s declaration to the audit years later. It is open source, offline-capable in the field, and installed and run by the firm that uses it.
The problem
Section titled “The problem”After a disaster, a jurisdiction (a county, a city, a state agency) is buried in debris. FEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers reimburse it for hauling that debris away, but only for debris that is proven eligible, measured and documented. Undocumented debris is unreimbursed debris.
The jurisdiction hires hauling contractors to pick the debris up, and separately hires a monitoring firm to watch the contractors and document every load. Contractors are paid per unit, which is the central tension of the industry:
The party being paid per unit is the same party reporting how many units there were.
Debris fraud is real and prosecuted: trucks that haul air, beds measured dishonestly, loads recorded twice, debris from outside the eligible area, ineligible material billed as eligible. And everything happens offline: curb and dump alike usually have no signal, so every control has to work after the fact.
The one sentence it serves
Section titled “The one sentence it serves”For every dollar billed, produce a GPS-stamped, photo-backed, dual-witnessed, audited record proving that a specific certified container or crew did specific eligible work, from a specific place to a specific approved site, at a specific time.
Open ADMS is a chain-of-custody and billing-integrity system that happens to run in the field, not a logistics app.
How it works, in five ideas
Section titled “How it works, in five ideas”- Two witnesses per load. A load is recorded as two field events by two monitors who cannot see each other: a collection at the curb and a disposal at the dump, under one ticket number. Only the server joins them, and it flags anything their facts disagree on. See Two field events, one ticket.
- The load call is money. Billable volume is the container’s certified capacity times the percentage full called at the dump. See The load call.
- Offline is normal. Phones work all day without a connection and sync whenever there is signal, in any order. See Offline and sync.
- Flag, never block. After a project is set up nothing stops field work. Problems are flagged for review with a plain message, and people fix them. See Flags, never blocks.
- Nothing is lost, and everything is audited. Records are corrected in place by permission and every prior value is kept; the ledger of money always shows the current truth. See The ledger and the audit trail.
Who uses it
Section titled “Who uses it”A firm, usually a debris monitoring firm, sometimes a non-profit doing like-kind work, installs Open ADMS and runs its own installation: one organisation per installation. Its setup decides how everything plays out.
| Who | Signs in | Does |
|---|---|---|
| Admin (the firm’s back office) | The back office, with two-step sign-in | Everything, project setup included |
| Manager / analyst | The back office, with two-step sign-in | What they are granted: dispatch, review, correct, renumber, void, accept flags, QC, lock as invoiced |
| Field monitor | An enrolled phone, with a Monitor ID such as M004127 | Records what they witnessed, fast and offline; never sees a rate or a code |
| Read-only viewer (a client user, a contractor user, an auditor) | The web, two-step optional | Reads their own project’s tickets and reports |
The client (the jurisdiction paying, such as Bayline County), the contractors (such as Coastline Haulers LLC and its sub Rivera Trucking) and property owners are records the firm keeps, not logins. A client user is a viewer login that belongs to a client.
What it guarantees
Section titled “What it guarantees”- No billable load without two independent witnesses. Unit rate work is the one-witness exception, by design.
- Field events are the evidence; everything the system writes is drawn from them, by the worker only. No person authors a completed load.
- No hard deletes; a regenerated transaction’s old row is copied to the audit log first; the audit log is append-only.
- Every change is attributable to a real person, with its prior value kept.
- One load bills once: unique numbers, unique pair links, a scale receipt used once, phantoms voided and never renumbered.
- Money is computed on the server, deterministically: the same field events and setup always give the same transactions.
- After setup, nothing refuses field work or a record over eligibility.
What it deliberately is not
Section titled “What it deliberately is not”- Not a truck-routing or logistics system. It plans people (the dispatch board), never trucks.
- Not a payment, invoicing or payroll system. It records what work is worth and the hours worked, locks what was invoiced or approved, and exports. Money moves elsewhere.
- Not a real-time validator. Every control runs after the fact.
- Not a guesser. It never infers a tandem, where debris was headed, which of two matching rules wins, or a missing weight.
- Not a stop-work system. Incidents are recorded; stopping work is decided outside it.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Quick start: bring an installation up on your machine.
- Two field events, one ticket: the idea everything else rests on.
- Glossary: every term in its exact meaning.