For follow up information since the start of this discussion see: https://paulbudde.com/blog/economic-social-and-political-issues-ict/follow-up-news-national-telecommunications-emergency-plan/
In October, the bushfires started around Bucketty. While Bucketty has so far been safe (fires are hovering at around 10 to 15 kilometres from this community now for several months), the people here are totally exhausted. On several occasions, families had to be evacuated, children ended up in hospital because of the smoke.
Though the community spirit is amazing, I have never seen the people so depressed. So, it is with mixed feeling that we are avoiding all of this from our new home in Brisbane.
For all those 30 years, I have been a volunteer firefighter and because of my telecoms background I have been involved in many of the communications issues, be it the emergency radio networks or the public telecoms networks.
Tens of thousands of people have fled from the fire-ravaged regions of New South Wales and Victoria as bushfires continue to devastate Australia.
Just watching the current daily fire horrors on the news with people queuing up for public phones and seeing them crying because they are unable to communicate with neighbours and family drives the message home how critical communications is.
Full marks to our telecoms companies who are now deploying multi-carrier response units (CoWs) offering free telecoms access and WiFi services wherever they can in communities they can reach, together with generators that allow people to charge their mobile phones and using loudspeakers to broadcast the emergency coverage by the ABC.
While it took several decades it now looks like the emergency radio comms system are working better. In the 2001 fires, we needed four sets of different radio comms to talk to the fire vehicles, the police, the helicopters and the national parks authorities.
While interoperability remains an issue, it is much better.
In the Lower Hunter Valley, we lobbied hard for mobile access. Telstra was the first to come to the party in the late 2000s, providing access to the township of Wollombi, Optus followed several years later with a tower in Bucketty. However, in times of emergencies, when you need the phones the most, there could be problems.
One of the first things to go in a bushfire disaster is electricity as all wires are still above ground. The mobile tower batteries last for approximately 10 hours or so but then the service is dead. In following years, the telcos started to install generators and that was a great improvement. But the next problem was that in regional and rural areas telecoms technicians had to come from far and even worse when roads are blocked, they can’t come at all.
I lobbied Optus in relation to the Bucketty tower that our local bushfire brigade would be allowed to refuel the generator in times of emergencies, and they agreed with that arrangement. Recently, the Rural Fire Service has issued notifications that the bushfire brigades are no longer allowed to do this, they quoted insurance and health and safety issues.
While I argued that this was over the top bureaucracy, I also started negotiations with Optus to perhaps employ a local contractor: a local handyman who could refuel the generator, however, this discussion was still ongoing when I left the area.
Obviously, this issue has become even far more prominent now. We need to make sure that all regional and rural mobile towers have both battery backup as well as generators.
Because of the scale of the current disaster and the reality that such situations could become more of a norm going forward, we need a national telecoms plan for such national emergency situations. Obviously the two above mentioned issues, radio comms interoperability (we now get fire trucks from all over the country working together) and matter of the fuel supply to mobile towers need to be addressed.
But there are many more issues that we need to review.
After the disastrous 2009 fires in Victoria – at the time a national fibre to the home plan was still on the program – I discussed with the then-Minister for Broadband Stephen Conroy that as new power infrastructure needed to be installed in these communities, we should at the same time bring fibre optic cables to these communities and bury them underground.
However, before such a plan could even be considered both the energy companies and telephone companies simply did what they had been doing for many decades in such situations just repair things the old way. After the disaster went on and no new emergency plan was prepared for the future. Now a decade later, we still don’t have a new plan.
If we work on a national telecoms emergency plan, we should look at on how to build more robustness into the system. For example, in areas where the Telstra copper cable will be replaced by a fixed wireless NBN service, rather than discarding the copper cable network, we should at a minimum investigate if we should maintain this infrastructure in the case of bushfire and flood-prone communities.
Some communities could be connected to fibre if we also take the social and economic benefits of having good communications in place in cases of emergency and not just the costs.
All mobile infrastructure is now software operated this means that the mobile operators can with the flick of a switch share capacity with other operators. For example, if one of the mobile operators goes down it is possible to flick the switch and make the facility of the other operator available as a backup.
While the mobile operators are fiercely opposed to roaming, in emergency areas the operators could again easily allow roaming on each other’s networks. These are very simple solutions that are available at hardly any extra cost. Rather than proving blackspot money to build more infrastructure let’s investigate open network solutions, that allow for sharing between all the operators in regional and rural areas.
We have seen the enormous success of the multi-carrier response units (CoWs) in the disaster areas, so we need to have more of the units available
Another plan could be to provide all fire stations with a satellite phone (they often already have generators and fuel). The satellite phone can be used not only by the fire brigade but also by the local community. It could even be buried in the ground during a fire to be retrieved afterwards.
If we bring the telecoms experts in this country together, they will come up with other plans and possibilities.
The scale of this disaster is so enormous that we must now start implementing plans that will not simply be a continuation of previous practices. We do need to look at new infrastructure options. There are synergy and cost-saving possibilities by combing electricity, telecoms and other infrastructure repairs such as roads. We need to start thinking outside the traditional box, technology can assist in being better prepared for the next emergency that sooner or later will be on our doorstep again.
Paul Budde
Additional suggestions, received with thanks:
There is a commercial company called Spire. One capability they have is the ability to do 3D weather models and forecasting using diffusion of GPS signals in the atmosphere as a result of water vapor in the air. Might be interesting to see if their models can inform this?
Also might be worth seeing if Planet Labs or other commercial sat companies – or commercial drones – can help identify dry foliage conditions in advance to provide better risks and warnings?
Deeper collaboration between ADF and Fire Authorities.
David
Good quality decent bandwidth vsat with generators with small power, Pico emergency cells running off the vsat.
John
Many mobiles can’t be recharged at emergency generators, emergency service vehicles or wherever power was available because each brand/model of phone had a different charger and without the appropriate charger cord, the phone was useless. They ACCC could investigate requiring a “common charger port” on mobile phones. Or alternatively look at facilities at those emergency points to recharge as are available on the CoWs
Bob
Consider establishment of comms services for refugees coming out of the area that will probably be concentrated into shelters and other inadequate facilities that don’t have any capacity for comms.
Typical COWs are pretty expensive. Might want to consider having some Cowboy Towers available for rapid deployment – http://www.cowboytower.com/ – they are completely off grid and can be deployed in an afternoon. A few of these with some off the shelf unlicensed microwave gear can be used to feed broadband into an area, but you would need some people with fixed wireless experience available, or at a very minimum, people who can install and point antennas and someone on the phone to walk them through the setup.
Matt
Review of possible relaxation of regulations in relation to cable provision and radio interference during emergencies. Or more general what role could the ACMA play in such situations.
Alex
It’s time to bring the Rural Fire Service into the digital age.
By Alastair Breingan crew leader in the Lansdowne Rural Fire Service article in SMH
My expertise is not on the supply side (all the suggestions do sound reasonable), but the demand side. The US situations saw some thought given to what apps and services the refugees, first-responders and others might need or want. For instance, I believe a locator/status service was developed, whereby refugees could post their location and status (fine; need X, etc.) as a relief and guidance to relatives and to those who would provide service. Another volunteer service/app was for those with goods and services to offer to sign up in a way that refugees and first-responders could contact them. (Those with medical or other technical expertise, those willing to provide food, shelter, clothing, etc.).
In many nations, the Red Cross organization has a great deal of experience and expertise along these lines and probably should be involved. In any case, I am recommending serious thought to the demand side (how the available connectivity should be and will be used) in addition to serious thought about how to provide connectivity.
Rollie
We (in my lab) recently developed a complete technology-agnostic mesh management system, which was used successfully multiple times for the DARPA RADICS exercise for electric grid restoration. The system provides decentralized applications for text chat and voice. A paper is in preparation.
See https://www.wired.com/story/black-start-power-grid-darpa-plum-island/
The Red Cross does indeed have standardized communication gear (satellite-based, from what I recall) in rapid deployment boxes. See https://www.ifrc.org/en/what-we-do/disaster-management/responding/disaster-response-system/dr-tools-and-systems/eru/types-of-eru/ and https://www.sagenet.com/case-studies/the-ability-to-communicate-no-matter-where-no-matter-when-no-matter-what/
Facebook provides I’m-safe check-in functionality (https://www.facebook.com/help/516656825135759?helpref=related). The problem is often that there’s a proliferation of such sites during disasters.
https://sahanafoundation.org/ is the ‘standard’ open-source package for managing resources during disasters. I think those types of systems are going to be just as important as the L0-L3 infrastructure.
I’m assuming that radio amateurs are also helping in Australia; besides their gear, they also provide distributed expertise. (http://www.arrl.org/news/australian-bushfires-causing-major-telecommunication-outages-hams-asked-to-remain-alert)
Henning
This high altitude floating tower brings reliable internet access and phone service to rural areas.
Mark