Building a resilient Australian disaster management system

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has released the report Taking a punch: Building a more resilient Australia. It argues that recent disaster planning has overemphasized terrorist attacks, which are unlikely and more effort should be devoted to natural disasters, which occur frequently in Australia. They suggest the community needs to be resilient to deal with disaster themselves, rather than assuming that if the call 000 someone will come to help.

The authors also point out that VOIP communications may make Australia more vulnerable:

VOIP (voice over internet protocols) technology is becoming of much greater importance so there will be challenges in reaching those who rely on internet access for all communications.

From: Strategic Insights 39 - Taking a punch: Building a more resilient Australia, David Templeman and Anthony Bergin, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 7 May 2008

The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has issued a Request for Proposals to Roll-out and Operate a National Broadband Network for Australia. It is likely that consumers and businesses will replace their wired phone services with VOIP over this new network. Most VOIP services are currently not designed for emergency communications, nor to operate during a mains power failure.

The RFP asks about provision of battery backup of the equipment and mentions emergency calls, but this is priority 16 out of 18. This needs to be treated as a higher priority. ICT can also improve on the previous analog telecommunications system to provide better facilities for emergency warnings and disaster recovery, such as broadcast text messages for Tsunami warning direct to the public's mobile phones and web based disaster recovery software which treats the community has participants, not just as victims.

...Commonwealth's objectives for the NBN... 16 is consistent with national security, e-security and e-safety policy objectives including compliance with laws relating to law enforcement assistance and emergency call services; ...

From: Request for Proposals to Roll-out and Operate a National Broadband Network for Australia, ATM ID DCON/08/18, Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, 11-Apr-2008

See also:

• E-government for emergencies
• Emergency management books:
  1. Disaster Mitigation
  2. Emergency Preparedness
  3. Business continuity planning
  4. Disaster Recovery