Crisis response planning in tunnel and road networks

Critical road infrastructure (such as tunnels and overpasses) is of major significance to society and constitutes major components of interdependent, ‘systems and networks’. Failure in critical components of these wide area infrastructure systems can often result in cascading disturbances with secondary and tertiary impacts - some of which may become initiating sources of failure in their own right, triggering further systems failures across wider networks. Perrow1) considered the impact of our increasing use of technology in high-risk fields, analysing the implications on everyday life and argued that designers of these types of infrastructure systems cannot predict every possible failure scenario nor create perfect contingency plans for operators. Challenges exist for transport system operators in the conceptualisation and implementation of response and subsequent recovery planning for significant events. Disturbances can vary from reduced traffic flow causing traffic congestion throughout the local road network(s) and subsequent possible loss of income to businesses and industry to a major incident causing loss of life or complete loss of an asset. Many organisations and institutions, despite increasing recognition of the effects of crisis events, are not adequately prepared to manage crises2). It is argued that operators of land transport infrastructure are in a similar category of readiness given the recent instances of failures in road tunnels. These unexpected infrastructure failures, and their ultimately identified causes, suggest there is significant room for improvement. As a result, risk profiles for road transport systems are often complex due to the human behaviours and the inter-mix of technical and organisational components and the managerial coverage needed for the socio-technical components and the physical infrastructure. In this sense, the span of managerial oversight may require new approaches to asset management that combines the notion of risk and continuity management. This paper examines challenges in the planning of response and recovery practices of owner/operators of transport systems (above and below ground) in Australia covering: • Ageing or established infrastructure; and • New-build infrastructure. With reference to relevant international contexts this paper seeks to suggest options for enhancing the planning and practice for crisis response in these transport networks and as a result support the resilience of Critical Infrastructure.

Assessing the suitability of existing spatial data for disaster planning and mitigation in Queensland

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 2003 gave in-principle approval to a best-practice report recommending a holistic approach to managing natural disasters in Australia incorporating a move from a traditional response-centric approach to a greater focus on mitigation, recovery and resilience with community well-being at the core. Since that time, there have been a range of complementary developments that have supported the COAG recommended approach. Developments have been administrative, legislative and technological, both, in reaction to the COAG initiative and resulting from regular natural disasters. This paper reviews the characteristics of the spatial data that is becoming increasingly available at Federal, state and regional jurisdictions with respect to their being fit for the purpose for disaster planning and mitigation and strengthening community resilience. In particular, Queensland foundation spatial data, which is increasingly accessible by the public under the provisions of the Right to Information Act 2009, Information Privacy Act 2009, and recent open data reform initiatives are evaluated. The Fitzroy River catchment and floodplain is used as a case study for the review undertaken. The catchment covers an area of 142,545 km2, the largest river catchment flowing to the eastern coast of Australia. The Fitzroy River basin experienced extensive flooding during the 2010–2011 Queensland floods. The basin is an area of important economic, environmental and heritage values and contains significant infrastructure critical for the mining and agricultural sectors, the two most important economic sectors for Queensland State. Consequently, the spatial datasets for this area play a critical role in disaster management and for protecting critical infrastructure essential for economic and community well-being. The foundation spatial datasets are assessed for disaster planning and mitigation purposes using data quality indicators such as resolution, accuracy, integrity, validity and audit trail.

Proposing and developing the definition and conceptual framework for healthcare resilience to cope with disasters

Building healthcare resilience is an important step towards creating more resilient communities to better cope with future disasters. To date, however, there appears to be little literature on how the concept of healthcare resilience should be defined and operationalized with a conceptual framework. This article aims to build a comprehensive healthcare disaster management approach guided by the concept of resilience. Methods: Google and major health electronic databases were searched to retrieve critical relevant publications. A total of 61 related publications were included, to provide a comprehensive overview of theories and definitions relevant to disaster resilience. Results and Discussions: Resilience is an inherent and adaptive capacity to cope with future uncertainty, through multiple strategies with all hazards approaches, in an attempt to achieve a positive outcome with linkage and cooperation. Healthcare resilience can be defined as the capability of healthcare organisations to resist, absorb, and respond to the shock of disasters while maintaining the most essential functions, then recover to their original state or adapt to a new state. It can be assessed by criteria, namely: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness; and a complex of key dimensions, namely: vulnerability and safety, disaster resources and preparedness, continuity of essential health services, recovery and adaptation. Conclusions: This new concept places healthcare organisations’ disaster capabilities, management tasks, activities and disaster outcomes together into a comprehensive whole view, using an integrated approach and establishing achievable goals.

Natural disaster risk-informed for a better public infrastructure asset planning in Indonesian Central Government

The natural disasters incident that frequently hit Indonesia are floods, severe droughts, tsunamis, earth-quakes, volcano, eruptions, landslides, windstorm and forest fires. The impact of those natural disasters are significantly severe and affecting the quality of life of the community due to the breakdown of the public as-sets as one source to deliver public services. This paper is aimed to emphasis the importance of natural disaster risk-informed in relation to public asset management in Indonesian Central Government, particularly in asset planning stage where asset decision is made as the gate into the whole public asset management processes. A Case study in the Ministry of Finance Indonesia as the central government public asset manager and in 5 (five) line ministries/governmental agencies as public asset users was used as the approach to achieved the research objective. The case study devoured three data collection techniques i.e. interviews, observations and document archival which will be analysed by a content analysis approach. The result of the study indicates that Indonesian geographical position exposing many of public infra-structure assets as a high vulnerability to natural disasters. Information on natural-disaster trends and predictions to identify and measure the risks are available, however, such information are not utilise and integrated to the process of public infrastructure asset planning as the gate to the whole public asset management processes. Therefore, in order to accommodate and incorporate this natural disaster risk-information into public asset management processes, particularly in public asset planning, a public asset performance measurements framework should be adopted and applied in the process as one sources in making decision for infrastructure asset planning. Findings from this study provide useful input for the Ministry of Finance as public asset manager, scholars and private asset management practitioners in Indonesia to establish natural disaster risks awareness in public infrastructure asset management processes.

Assessing resilience of water resources systems under the impacts of climate change

This paper presents an approach to assess the resilience of a water supply system under the impacts of climate change. Changes to climate characteristics such as rainfall, evapotranspiration and temperature can result in changes to the global hydrological cycle and thereby adversely impact on the ability of water supply systems to meet service standards in the future. Changes to the frequency and characteristics of floods and droughts as well as the quality of water provided by groundwater and surface water resources are the other consequences of climate change that will affect water supply system functionality. The extent and significance of these changes underline the necessity for assessing the future functionality of water supply systems under the impacts of climate change. Resilience can be a tool for assessing the ability of a water supply system to meet service standards under the future climate conditions. The study approach is based on defining resilience as the ability of a system to absorb pressure without going into failure state as well as its ability to achieve an acceptable level of function quickly after failure. In order to present this definition in the form of a mathematical function, a surrogate measure of resilience has been proposed in this paper. In addition, a step-by-step approach to estimate resilience of water storage reservoirs is presented. This approach will enable a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of a water storage reservoir under future climate scenarios and can also be a robust tool to predict future challenges faced by water supply systems under the consequence of climate change.

Climate change adaptation for public buildings management : stakeholder roles and responsibilities

Climate change is expected to increase earth’s temperatures and consequently result in more frequent extreme weather events such as cyclones, storms, droughts and floods and rising global sea levels. This phenomenon will affect all assets. This paper discusses the impact of climate change and its consequences on public buildings. Public building management encompasses the building life cycle from planning, procurement, operation, repair and maintenance and building disposal. This paper recommends climate change adaptation strategies to be integrated into public building management. The roles and responsibilities of asset managers and users are discussed within the framework of planning and implementation of public building management and the integration of climate change adaptation strategies. A key point is that climate change can induce premature obsolescence of public buildings and services, which will increase the maintenance and refurbishment costs. This in turn will affect the life cycle cost of the building. Furthermore, a business continuity plan is essential for public building management in the context of disasters. The paper also highlights the significant role that the occupants of public buildings can play in the development and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies.

An approach for identifying the limit states of resilience of a water supply system

This paper presents an approach for identifying the limit states of resilience in a water supply system when influenced by different types of pressure (disturbing) forces. Understanding of systemic resilience facilitates identification of the trigger points for early managerial action to avoid further loss of ability to provide satisfactory service availability when the ability to supply water is under pressure. The approach proposed here is to illustrate the usefulness of a surrogate measure of resilience depicted in a three dimensional space encompassing independent pressure factors. That enables visualisation of the transition of the system-state (resilience) between high to low resilience regions and acts as an early warning trigger for decision-making. The necessity of a surrogate measure arises as a means of linking resilience to the identified pressures as resilience cannot be measured directly. The basis for identifying the resilience surrogate and exploring the interconnected relationships within the complete system, is derived from a meta-system model consisting of three nested sub-systems representing the water catchment and reservoir; treatment plant; and the distribution system and end-users. This approach can be used as a framework for assessing levels of resilience in different infrastructure systems by identifying a surrogate measure and its relationship to relevant pressures acting on the system.

A critical analysis of crisis escalation models : understanding stages and severity in infrastructure disturbance

A range of authors from the risk management, crisis management, and crisis communications literature have proposed different models as a means of understanding components of crisis. A generic component of these sources has focused on preparedness practices before disturbance events and response practices during events. This paper provides a critical analysis of three key explanatory models of how crises escalate highlighting the strengths and limitations of each approach. The paper introduces an optimised conceptual model utilising components from the previous work under the four phases of pre-event, response, recovery, and post-event. Within these four phases, a ten step process is introduced that can enhance understanding of the progression of distinct stages of disturbance for different types of events. This crisis evolution framework is examined as a means to provide clarity and applicability to a range of infrastructure failure contexts and provide a path for further empirical investigation in this area.

Sustainability in post disaster road infrastructure recovery projects in Queensland, Australia

Between mid 2010 and early 2013, Queensland road related infrastructures were devastated by flood and cyclone related natural disasters. Responding to these recent events and in preparing for more regular and intense climate-change induced events in future, the Queensland Government is now reviewing how post-disaster road infrastructure recovery projects are planned and delivered. In particular, there is awareness that rebuilding such infrastructure need sustainable strategies across economic, environmental and social dimensions. A comprehensive sustainability assessment framework for pre and post disaster situations can minimize negative impact on our communities, economy and environment. This research is underway to develop a comprehensive sustainability element frame work for post disaster management in road infrastructures in Queensland, Australia. Analyzing the implications of disruption to transport network and associated services is an important part of preparing local and regional responses to the impacts of natural disasters. This research can contribute to strategic planning, management leading to safe, efficient and integrated transport system that supports sustainable economic, social and environmental outcomes in Queensland. Within this context, this paper provides an overview of the qualitative mixed-method research approach involving literature reviews and case studies to explore and evaluate a number of sustainability elements with a view to develop operational strategies for disaster recovery road projects.

Creating regional resilience in Australia

This paper explores the impact that extreme weather events can have on communities. Using the Brisbane floods of 2011 to examine the recovery operations, the paper highlights the effectiveness of recovery and rebuilding in already strong and resilient communities. Our research has shown that communities which have a strong sense of identity, as well as organized places to meet, develop resilient networks that come into play in times of crisis. The increasing trend of the fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) or drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) workforce to service regional areas has undermined the resilience of existing communities. The first hint of this occurs with community groups not knowing who their neighbours are. The paper is based on research examining the needs of groups in regional communities with the goal to better equip regional communities with the capacity to respond positively to change (and crisis) through in-novative, evidence-based policies, resilience strategies and tools. Part of this process was to build an evidence-base to address a range of challenges associated with the place-based environments and the sharing of information systems within communities and decision makers. The first part of the paper explores the context in which communities have been required to mobilize in response to crises; the issues that have galvanized a common purpose; and the methods by which these communities shared their knowledge. The second part of the paper examines how communities could plan for and mitigate natural disasters in the future by developing better decision making tools. The paper defines the requirements for information systems that will link data models of built infrastruc-ture with data from the disaster and response plans. These will then form the basis for the use of social media to coordinate activities between official crews and the public to improve response coordination and provide the technology that could reduce the time required to allow communities to resume some semblance of normality.

Review: "Planning Asian cities : risks and resilience" edited by Stephen Hamnett and Dean Forbes, Planning, History and Environment Series, London, Routledge, 2011

Since the beginning of the agricultural revolution, cities have always been the cradle of civilisation, innovation and productivity, particularly as a result of the recent change factors affecting their (trans)formation, such as globalisation, the knowledge economy, technological advancements, climate change and so on. While in some parts of the world, cities are rapidly growing, in other parts, cities are shrinking, and their populations are aging. Even under the current pressure of constantly changing global conditions, the role of cities in influencing and partially shaping local, regional, national, supranational and even global level economy, society, environment and governance is undeniable. Global changes, while providing opportunities for cities and their administrations to reform and revisit existing planning and development processes and mechanisms, at the same time, challenge them by dealing with everincreasing risks and establishing resilience. At present, more than half of the world’s population...

Displaced twice? Talking about resilience with a cohort of men from refugee backgrounds who were affected by the 2011 Queensland floods

What can we learn from people from refugee backgrounds who have been affected by an environmental disaster? This paper presents the first year findings of a study that is investigating the impact of the 2011 Queensland floods on a cohort of men from refugee backgrounds living in Brisbane and the Toowoom- ba–Gatton region of Southeast Queensland. Between 2008 and 2010, the SettleMEN study yielded pre-disaster measures of health and settlement among 233 refugee men. The current 2012−2013 follow-up study offers a rare opportunity to investigate and describe the impact of an environmental disaster on the health and wellbeing of a group of resettled refugee men who were affected by the 2011 Queensland floods. Using a mixed-method approach and a peer interviewer model, this paper reports on the exposure to and impact of the floods on the first 100 respondents who were interviewed between September 2012 and March 2013. Overall, we have found that the floods had a considerable economic and psychosocial impact on this group of men, their families and communities in terms of being forced to evacuate their homes, work disrup- tion, loss of income and personal belongings, and emotional distress. Many of these men reported that their previous refugee experience helped them to cope better during and after the floods, and for some, providing assistance to others during the floods impacted positively on their relationship with their neighbours. These findings challenge the Western deficits model that defines former refugees as traumatised victims. Refugee people’s strengths and capabilities should be taken into consideration when developing disaster response strategies at the neighbourhood and community levels.

BIM support for disaster response

The introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM) to the design, construction and operation of buildings is changing the way that the building construction industry works. BIM involves the development of a full 3D virtual model of a building which not only contains the 3D information necessary to show the building as it will appear, but also contains significant additional data about each component in the building. BIM represents both physical and virtual objects in a building. This includes the rooms and spaces within and around the building. The additional data stored on each part of the building can support building maintenance opera- tions and, more importantly from the perspective of this paper, support the generation and running of simula- tions of the operation of the building and behaviour of people within it under both normal and emergency scenarios. The initial discussion is around the use of BIM to support the design of resilient buildings which references the various codes and standards that define current best practice. The remainder of the discussion uses various recent events as the basis for discussion on how BIM could have been used to support rapid recovery and re- building.

Strategies for embedding agile decision making in aviation infrastructure

As highlighted by previous work in Normal Accident Theory1 and High Reliability Organisations, 2 the ability of a system to be flexible is of critical importance to its capability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disturbance and disasters. This paper proposes that the research into ‘edge organisations’3 and ‘agility’4 is a potential means to operationalise components that embed high reliable traits in the management and oversight of critical infrastructure systems. Much prior work has focused on these concepts in a military frame whereas the study reported on here examines the application of these concepts to aviation infrastructure, specifically, a commercial international airport. As a commercial entity functions in a distinct manner from a military organisation this study aims to better understand the complementary and contradictory components of the application of agility work to a commercial context. Findings highlight the challenges of making commercial operators of infrastructure systems agile as well as embedding traits of High Reliability in such complex infrastructure settings.