Front-line disaster information has emerged as a key element for natural disaster response, according to Queensland’s Flood Commission of Inquiry Report released today.
A year on from one of the greatest natural disasters in Queensland history, the Report has shown the poor flow of information between local, district and state disaster management groups during the 2011 floods greatly hindered the state’s disaster response.
Queensland enterprise information management specialist Neil Glentworth said the 2011 floods highlighted the need for a radical overhaul of information management to help minimise the effect of natural disasters.
“The response to the Inquiry report recommended a system that allowed information about emergency procedures, warnings and evacuation to be readily available and interpreted in different languages,” Mr Glentworth said.
“The Department of Community Safety already had the information they needed, but it was not aggregated in a way that allowed them to access and use information when they needed it.
“The needle in a hay stack dilemma meant providing the Department with clarity of how multiple sources of information could be viewed to form an intelligent picture.
“Only by thinking outside the square on what had already been done, could the Department use a new approach for information they already had to help minimise the impacts and speed up the responses to a natural disaster.”
Chris Fisher, Director of the All Hazards Information Management Program in the Queensland Department of Community Safety said the complex situation required a clear solution from the outset.
“A significant factor in supporting decision makers in any disaster is to ensure everyone is informed, the barrier to achieving this was having rapid access to the right information,” Mr Fisher said.
“We needed new way of thinking, to make the problem easy to understand while providing a clear focus on the solution.”
Mr Glentworth said learning from other natural disasters around the world allowed the project to take on a life of its own and ensure the Department’s needs were met.
“The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a maxim - ‘deliver the right information to the right people at the right time, in order that they may make the right decision,’ that’s essentially what we were trying to deliver,” he said.
“Sometimes it goes beyond just accurate and accessible information, but also ensuring this information has the right effect on those who receive it.
“We know from a US study of over 2000 people in high-risk hurricane territory, conducted one year after Hurricane Katrina, despite being warned by government officials and massive media coverage of Katrina, some 34 per cent of people still did not act on the information provided to them and leave the area.
“Our role was to empower the Department of Community Safety so they can spend more time communicating effectively, a not having to search for accurate information.”
