Built to
The standards behind emergency and incident management
Sendai, incident management systems across four countries, the Australian Warning System and CAP, declarations under the Act, flood warning classes, fire danger and smoke, geoscience and tsunami agencies, LPWAN field sensing, cameras and privacy, recovery funding arrangements, business continuity.
Standards
| Standard | Source | Requirement | Where it shows up here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disaster risk reduction | Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 to 2030 (UN); National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework (AU, 2018); Australian Disaster Preparedness Framework | Understand risk, strengthen governance, invest in reduction, enhance preparedness for effective response and recovery. | Hazard zones with plans, assets and evacuation triggers; field monitoring and feeds as the risk picture; recovery on the same platform. |
| Incident management | AIIMS (Australasia); NIMS and ICS (US); CIMS (NZ); JESIP (UK); ISO 22320 | One incident controller, defined functions, situation reports on a cadence, a single log. | Incident with controller, level and resources; situation reports drafted from live data and approved by the controller; one hash-linked log (GL-EM-05, 09). |
| Public warnings | Australian Warning System (Advice, Watch and Act, Emergency Warning); Common Alerting Protocol v1.2 (OASIS) and CAP-AU-STD; Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements 2020 recs 12.1 and 12.2 | Consistent levels and calls to action; interoperable messages; issued by an authorised officer. | Thresholds map to the three levels; every warning is drafted in CAP terms, issued by an authorised officer and exported as CAP at /api/cap (GL-EM-01, 10). |
| Declarations and evacuation | State emergency management Acts (declarations by the minister; evacuation directions by the incident controller or emergency operations controller) | Legal effect on the public rests with the person the Act names. | The agent drafts the grounds from the readings; the incident controller directs, the minister declares (GL-EM-02). |
| Flood warning classes and gauges | Bureau of Meteorology flood warning service (minor, moderate, major by gauge); local flood plans | Warnings referenced to gauge heights and their consequences. | Each gauge carries minor, moderate and major heights; the evacuation trigger is a gauge height and trend. |
| Fire danger and smoke | Australian Fire Danger Rating System (2022); air quality categories (PM2.5) | Consistent ratings; smoke advice from measured particulates. | Air quality nodes with PM2.5 thresholds; fire lookout cameras; fire feeds from the combat agency. |
| Geoscience and tsunami | Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre; PTWC and NTWC (NOAA); IOC/UNESCO; USGS, Geoscience Australia, GeoNet, EMSC, JMA, BMKG, PHIVOLCS | Earthquake, volcano and tsunami advice from the authoritative agency for the region. | External feeds polled live from national and global agencies, in CAP or GeoJSON, matched to zones (GL-EM-10). |
| Satellite observation | NASA EONET and FIRMS (MODIS, VIIRS); Himawari-9 hotspots via Digital Earth Australia; USGS volcano notices; GDACS satellite flood detection; Copernicus EMS rapid mapping on request | Use what the satellites already see: fire hotspots, storms, volcanic activity, flood extent. | Satellite feeds polled live and badged on the feeds page; hotspots and events matched to zones; FIRMS with a free key (GL-EM-10). |
| Field sensing and networks | The 2020 Emergency Management Blueprint (hybrid LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and satellite LPWAN; water level, rainfall, soil moisture, air quality, wind, tilt); LoRaWAN specification; 3GPP NB-IoT | Coverage in remote areas, low power, provenance on every reading, health of every device visible. | Device register by transport and provider; ingest endpoint for TTN uplinks and NB-IoT bridges; stale and offline devices shown as such (GL-EM-04, 07). |
| Cameras and privacy | Australian Privacy Principles; surveillance devices legislation; council CCTV codes of practice | Purpose, retention and privacy recorded; images for situational awareness, not identification. | Every camera records purpose, retention and a privacy note; frames inform the board and the log only (GL-EM-06). |
| Recovery assistance | Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements 2018 (Categories A to D); Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment and Allowance; state personal hardship schemes; FEMA Individual Assistance (US) as a comparator | Assistance activated for the event, assessed on verified damage, paid quickly, hardship first, decided by a delegate. | Recovery agent tests each measure with its provision, checks activation and duplicates, prioritises hardship; the delegated officer decides and payment is prepared for MG-03 (GL-EM-03, 08). |
| Business continuity | ISO 22301 | The centre keeps running when networks fail. | Satellite gateway as the fallback transport; offline devices and feed errors shown rather than hidden; sample alerts labelled when a feed is unreachable. |
| Accessibility and plain language | WCAG 2.2 AA; ISO 24495-1 | Every screen usable with assistive technology; warnings a person can act on. | Interfaces designed against WCAG 2.2 AA with conformance evidenced per deployment; warnings carry a plain instruction. |
The 2020 Emergency Management Blueprint, checked
What the earlier research proposed, and what has changed since
| Item | Then (2020) | Now (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and satellite LPWAN network | Proposed for a regional river valley pilot (2020) | Still the right architecture. LoRaWAN and NB-IoT are mainstream; satellite IoT has more providers and lower cost. Kept as the device register's transports. |
| Hazard sensor set: water level, rainfall, soil moisture, air quality, wind, temperature, tilt | Blueprint hazard table | Kept as the device kinds; thresholds per device drive the warning levels. |
| Resilience NSW as the state agency | Stakeholder list (2020) | Abolished December 2022; recovery functions moved to the NSW Reconstruction Authority. Agency directory updated. |
| Emergency Management Australia (Home Affairs) | Federal stakeholder (2020) | The National Emergency Management Agency was formed in September 2022. Directory updated. |
| Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements | Interim report cited (2020) | Final report October 2020: the Australian Warning System and the Australian Fire Danger Rating System followed (2021 and 2022). Both are built in. |
| Basic alerting by mobile phone | Pilot scope | Warnings now follow the three-level system and export as CAP to the national aggregator, not a bespoke SMS. |
| Dashboard with river height widgets and a prediction widget | LEMDS pilot scope | The field board shows latest, trend and band per device; prediction is left to the weather service's forecasts in the feed. |
| Open data portal for sensor data | Executive summary | Readings are on the public warnings page with provenance; a full open-data export is a later scope. |