For decades, first responder agencies – from fire and rescue, ambulance, police, hospitals, cyber security agencies to our community organisations and Defence Forces – have worked tirelessly to help our communities and regions respond to crises.
These efforts have been nothing short of extraordinary, and our emergency services personnel and volunteers have earned a unique position in our national consciousness.
However, in a time of more frequent and severe natural disasters, current crisis management arrangements are straining at the seams. New thinking is required.
Long term, that will mean a complete remake of what we consider unusual or unprecedented events, and the cycles of our climate driving droughts and floods. But right now, there are three critical issues we need to address:
- Structures and processes that recognise and embed locally-led responses into disaster planning up front
- Better risk-driven decision making at all levels – from governments to individuals – about where to buy, how to build and how to protect their assets
- Communications systems that allow everyone involved to get the information they need, when they need it.
Engaging and empowering communities
The catastrophic February–March 2022 east coast floods saw rainfall records fall across south-east Queensland and north-east NSW.
More than 20 people died nationally, and the Insurance Council of Australia estimated $3.35 billion in insured losses, making it ‘the costliest flood in Australia’s history’.
In Lismore in northern NSW, the unexpectedly high flood peak meant thousands had to be rescued. Local reporting suggested most rescues were conducted by civilians, as the scale of the task overwhelmed official response capabilities.
Australia has a unique combination of extensive regional and remote geographies and widespread climate and other risks of all kinds. No matter how quickly governments respond, in many cases it will be local communities, businesses and volunteers on the scene first.
Governments have worked hard to get the right arrangements in place to prepare for these crises and institutional arrangements have evolved significantly over the past decade. However, centralisation and over-regulation have continued to feature as governments grapple to find ways to navigate the complexity of concurrent crises impacting multiple local government authorities and states at once.
The opportunity now is to enact further change guided by what the public really needs in a crisis.
We are heavily reliant on our volunteer services. According to 2016 Census data, over 3.6 million people said they had volunteered in the past year. By 2021 this had dropped 19% to 2.9 million – in part due to the impacts of COVID-19 but also reflective of a consistent downward trend. The sustained duration of recent crises has had both a mental and financial toll on our volunteer forces who have sacrificed paid employment and may themselves be dealing with personal impacts of the crisis.
Our reliance on our Defence Force to supplement our front line responders is also under strain as we look increasingly outwards to respond to evolving geopolitical risks. The Government’s commitment to $38.1m over three years to Disaster Relief Australia (DRA), a veteran-led service that helps respond to natural disasters in affected communities, is a recognition of the need for a shift in our volunteering policies.
At the same time, spontaneous volunteers – people and groups self mobilising to assist an impacted community – are increasingly at the fore of our response. This is more than filling gaps. Communities have their finger on the pulse and understand the devastating impact of these events in a way that nobody else can. Many have solutions and mechanisms in place that are appropriate to the local context and already working for them.
This is a shift in posture – from centralised ‘one-size-fits-all’ responses to locally-led, state enabled and federally supported responses. We should not try to escape that fact, rather do the opposite.
Meaningful engagement at the local level needs to be the starting point for disaster preparedness, as well as broader systemic reform.
We should empower local communities, including:
- Formal cross-sector planning and training before a crisis occurs, including to identify key community capabilities and assets that can be harnessed, a shared understanding of vulnerabilities and clarity on role and responsibilities
- Resources to respond before government agencies have had the opportunity to mobilise in those first few hours and days
- Support for business resilience and continuity planning from our essential services right down to our SME sector recognising the ability for our business sector to quickly rebound provides the foundation for the economic recovery – and social recovery – of impacted communities
- A way for communities to quickly communicate to government immediate needs and barriers to self-help and progress of recovery.
On the part of governments, they need to work with essential service providers to pre-empt and pre-mobilise stockpiles and capabilities that can be swiftly deployed, optimise the roles of different levels of government and be prepared to proactively cut through regulatory and administrative impediments to the enablement of recovery.
What happens when the electricity network is down? No phone, no heating, no electronic medical equipment, no communications, no internet, no social media? Every one of us needs to be equipped to think about how we deal with that.
Putting in place the right support structures before disaster strikes will allow for governments to effectively lean into community efforts, without necessarily taking over. This needs to appreciate the baseline for each community and their lived experiences of disasters; some local governments and communities are well practiced and “battle hardened”, others are not and will need more assistance.
Clearer, better information
Undoubtedly, we need better risk modelling and scenario planning and we need this embedded into our major infrastructure and land-use planning decisions. Nothing is certain but we can do far better in quantifying what is likely to occur than simply looking to weather reports.
This needs to translate to straightforward and integrated advice from federal, state and local governments out to people and businesses so they can make risk-informed decisions about where to live and invest, what and how to build and how to best protect themselves, their assets and livelihoods should a crisis hit, including adequate insurance.
Good progress is being made on providing risk information in a way that is easy to understand, like the recent NSW SES efforts to help people better understand their flood risk or the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) threat alert service. But information is still disseminated based on the agency responsible – e.g. it may be Rural Fire Service for fires, State Emergency Service for floods, the ACSC for cyber risk – with a range of apps required across different agencies and across jurisdictions.
Like other advances in citizen services, we need to simplify the ‘front-door’ for getting information out to people and business so that it is comprehensive, consumable and actionable. This applies both before and during a disaster – in providing clear warnings and evacuation advice, including across state borders.
This is about good user-centred, digital design underpinned by behavioural insights.
And when the disaster hits, we need a way for on the ground insights to flow rapidly back to decision makers. Part of this is around integrated planning and part may be thinking how to better harness drones and autonomous technologies.
Importantly, a recurrent theme is the stress faced by impacted people and communities in trying to navigate through layers of government and other providers of support to understand what assistance is available to them.
There is a need to ensure relief and recovery funding flows to communities through ‘tell us once’ digital channels, instead of a confusing and tangled web of different access points.
Fresh thinking to make communities part of the solution
Putting in place the right support structures before disaster strikes will allow for governments to effectively lean into community efforts, without necessarily taking over. This needs to appreciate the baseline for each community and their lived experiences of disasters; some local governments and communities are well practiced and “battle hardened”, others are not and will need more assistance.
PwC is creating bespoke sustainable strategies to reduce Australia’s unique vulnerabilities, and better prepare for, respond to and recover from crises when they inevitably occur. Our community of solvers are working with governments right now to tackle some of Australia’s most important problems. We are proud to play our part in strengthening the communities we all live in.
