As part of the Australian government’s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience program, emergency services agencies nationwide have prioritised establishing preparedness and prevention strategies to create greater community and organisational resilience.
A best-practice example of this is the ACT Emergency Services Authority (ESA), which has used Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to develop a revolutionary Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) tool.
In developing this tool, ESA sought to provide Canberra residents and emergency responders alike with an accurate understanding of the bushfire risk facing properties – before a fire strikes.
The tool introduces new rigor, accuracy and consistency to how risk assessments are managed, and provides unparalleled insight to not only authorities – but individual members of the public.
It has also generated significant efficiency gains for ESA by transforming a previously manually laborious task to a rapid automated process that assesses 16,000 properties in just one hour.
The tool is now also underpinning property construction regulation and building codes – to ensure that every new home built has the lowest possible risk in terms of exposure to bushfire, to prevent a situation like the devastating 2003 Canberra fires from ever occurring again.