Abstract: Smart Service Queensland (SSQ) is the ‘front door’ to the Queensland State Government in Australia, providing services and information for citizens and businesses. Services are delivered through online channels, call centres and face-to-face service centres. Rostering to adequately staff the call centres during business as usual demand is well supported using existing workforce planning tools and content management systems alongside real-time telephonic monitoring. However, during times of large scale emergency events, such as floods and tropical cyclones, effective workforce planning heavily relies upon experienced SSQ personnel constantly monitoring and updating call centre staffing levels leading up to and during the disaster event to ensure customer demands are met. Achieving the right balance of call centre servicing without over provisioning is a challenging task. We present a prototype analytics tool that supports the SSQ Forecast Analyst responsible for workforce planning during disaster events and provides initial results of modelling caller behavior during two recent tropical cyclones. The tool provides a single point of reference to a wide collection of relevant datasets, including population demographics and details of the natural and built environment, data feeds describing the emergency event under investigation, relevant social media posts and call centre operations metrics. The tool is an early proof of concept demonstrator highlighting the utility of data integration, web mapping, real-time event monitoring, and predictive modelling.

Abstract: The contemporary world is characterized by several large-scale hazards to human societies and the environments we live in, including the impacts of climate change. This paper outlines theories concerning cognitive psychology and complexity dynamics that help explain the challenges of responding to these hazards and the complex systems which create them. These theories are illustrated with a baseball metaphor, to highlight the need for decision-making strategies which do not rely on comprehensive information where comprehensive information is not available. The importance of tools which can support more efficient uses of limited information is also outlined, as is the way that these tools help combine the computational resources and acquired experience of several minds. Existing research has been used to investigate many of the concepts outlined. However, further research is required to coalesce cognitive theories with complexity theories and the analysis of group-level interactions, towards improving important disaster management decisions.

Abstract: Disasters, when they strike hard, may cause the disruption of many vital services. ‘Telecommunications’ is being considered one of the vital lifeline services as many disaster relief operations rely on it. Effective communication is dependent on a telecommunication network infrastructure that is working properly. Unfortunately, the infrastructure may be damaged during a disaster causing no-coverage and/or congested network traffic in the disaster-affected areas. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework for building a resilient communication system that not only considers the communications infrastructure but also other driving factors which are necessary for its success. The proposed framework is based on five key pillars, namely: robustness, redundancy, adaptability, agility, and readiness to build capability for developing a resilient communication system. The findings reported in this paper provide some insights into resilient communications that may help network researchers/engineers to contribute further towards developing a robust and resilient communication system capable of coping with disasters.