Between late February and April 2022, the Australian East Coast experienced one of the Country’s worst natural disasters in recent history as torrential downpours caused unprecedented levels of flooding. The catastrophic weather event, caused by a low-pressure system, resulted in the loss of 23 lives and forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes and businesses. Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared the situation a National Emergency and ordered members of the Australian Defence Force into flood-affected regions to assist existing response teams. The scale of the disaster throughout New South Wales and Queensland was extraordinary, with over 20,000 properties sustaining damage. According to the Insurance Council of Australia, the total estimated cost of the damage is expected to exceed $2.487 billion AUD for this single period.
As the storms began to ease, the full extent of the damage was revealed. In addition to the significant toll the weather event had taken on residents’ homes and businesses, major infrastructure had sustained crippling damage. Throughout both States, landslips and cracking had severely impacted major roads, bridges, and freeways, restricting access. Water damage, fallen trees, and winds had cut off thousands of residents from essential services that desperately needed to be restored. Almost every essential service in flood-affected regions was damaged, from electricity networks to sewerage systems to critical communication services.
The team at Australia’s largest high-speed, wholesale, local access broadband network is responsible for ensuring that more than 8.5 million customers have access to essential communication daily. NBN provides Australian consumers with access to their network through partnerships with Australian retail ISPs using a variety of different technologies for phone and internet services. As the catastrophic weather event unfolded, flooding and storms caused significant damage at over 1,800 NBN-owned sites throughout New South Wales and Queensland. The unprecedented event resulted in over 300,000 premises across both States losing access to essential communication services. NBN needed to rapidly identify damaged equipment, prioritise locations, understand current weather conditions, and manage the repair process as quickly as possible.
The WebEOC features that allowed NBN to restore Australia’s internet faster include:
• Total visibility of incident response with custom NBN-specific Network Incident Management Board and easy to read dashboards
• Less distraction when critical events occur with advanced stakeholder notifications that allow response teams to focus on the task at hand
• Easily assign different roles and access to individual team members as requirements or roles change
• Comprehensive Activity Log displays granular incident data at every location as incidents evolve
• Ready to use off-the-shelf solution with customization available to introduce specific functionality
To view outcomes, download the full case study below.
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