The Intelligence-Driven Fire Service: Learning from Industries That Operate at the Edge

■ Climate extremes have turned Australian fire services into all-hazards, year-round organisations. The operating model hasn't fully caught up. ■ Defence, mining, oil and gas, and autonomous systems already operate in high-consequence, remote, 24/7 conditions.

They have spent decades and billions of dollars learning how to do it safely. ■ This series takes their proven lessons and adapts them deliberately to fire services in every state and territory, working with Police, Ambulance and the SES. ■ Cyber security runs through every lesson.

An intelligence-driven fire service is a digital fire service, and that makes it a target. ■ This edition adds the evidence from major inquiries, a definition of what "intelligence-driven" means in practice, a maturity model, an illustrative scenario, and questions for boards and executives. Australian fire services are among the best in the world at what they do.

But climate extremes are changing what they are asked to do. Fire seasons are longer and more intense. Floods, storms and heatwaves are more frequent.

Events overlap across seasons and jurisdictions, demand keeps rising, and the workforce, especially volunteers, is under growing pressure.

24M+ hectares burned in Black Summer, 2019– 20 33 lives lost in the fires 3,000+ homes destroyed I believe the next step change for emergency services will come from intelligence: integrating weather, geospatial, satellite, dispatch, workforce and community data into one real-time picture that helps people decide and act earlier. This series asks a practical question: Who has already solved parts of this problem, and what can we learn from them? Fire burns across grassland and timber in New South Wales.

Climate extremes are now a continuous operating environment, not a season. Source: Photo by Darren Covington A changing operating environment The pressure on Australian fire services is not a temporary spike. It is a structural shift, and it is visible in the climate record, in demand and in the workforce.

The climate. The Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO's State of the Climate 2024 report found that Australia's climate has warmed by about 1.5°C since national records began in 1910. The same series of reports has documented an increase in extreme fire weather and a longer fire season across large parts of the country since the 1950s, along with more intense short-duration heavy rainfall.

In practical terms, that means more days when fires are hard to control, fewer opportunities for planned burning, and a greater chance of floods and fires affecting the same communities in quick succession. The demand. Fire services are no longer just fire services.

Most now respond to road crashes, hazardous materials incidents, rescues, storms, floods, heatwaves and medical support, and many play a role in recovery. Each new role brings new training, equipment and coordination requirements, often without matching increases in funding or people. The workforce.

Australia's fire and emergency services depend heavily on volunteers, especially in rural and regional areas. Many agencies report that their volunteers are ageing and that recruiting and retaining new

members is harder than it was, as work patterns, family commitments and population movements change. At the same time, career staff are facing more frequent deployments and more exposure to traumatic events. The expectations.

Communities expect timely, accurate and personalised warnings on their phones. Governments expect agencies to share information and coordinate seamlessly. Inquiries expect lessons to be learned and acted on.

All of this requires information to move faster and more reliably than it does today. These pressures don't call for doing the same things harder. They call for a different operating model, one built on intelligence, integration and resilience.

Building on real strengths This series is not a criticism of Australian emergency services. The sector has already made important progress, much of it in response to the inquiries above, and the next steps build on these foundations: ■ A national fire danger rating system. The Australian Fire Danger Rating System, introduced nationally in September 2022, gives the whole country a consistent, science-based way to describe fire danger.

■ Consistent public warnings. The Australian Warning System gives communities the same warning levels and calls to action, wherever they live and whatever the hazard. ■ National aviation arrangements.

The National Aerial Firefighting Centre coordinates access to a national fleet of firefighting aircraft, so states can draw on shared capability during peak periods. ■ National resource sharing. AFAC's arrangements for interstate and international deployments have moved thousands of personnel during major events, including Black Summer.

■ A common incident management system. AIIMS gives agencies a shared language and structure for managing incidents. ■ Predictive services and research.

Fire behaviour analysts, predictive services units and research partnerships have greatly improved the science behind operational decisions. These achievements show that national coordination and shared standards are possible. The intelligence-driven fire service extends the same approach from warnings and ratings to data, systems and decision-making.

Why look outside the sector? Every profession develops blind spots. Emergency services have built world-class expertise in firefighting, rescue and community safety, but the problems now in front of them are not purely operational.

They involve data, autonomy, complex systems, fatigue, asset readiness and digital risk. Those are exactly the problems four other industries have been working on for decades. Four industries stand out: defence, mining, oil and gas, and autonomous systems.

On the surface they look nothing like a fire brigade. Underneath, they share the defining characteristics of modern emergency services: ■ High consequence. When things go wrong, people die and the impacts are catastrophic and public.

■ Hazardous, dynamic environments where conditions change faster than plans. ■ Remote and dispersed operations across vast Australian distances. ■ 24/7 operations that depend on people working under fatigue and stress.

■ Expensive, critical assets that must be available exactly when needed. ■ Heavy dependence on data, sensing and real-time decision-making.

■ Intense regulatory and public scrutiny. Four industries, shared operating conditions. Source: Darren Covington Each of these industries has invested heavily, often after tragedy, in how to operate safely and effectively in these conditions.

Fire services have the opportunity to learn from that experience without paying the same price. What the inquiries keep telling us Australia has a long history of major inquiries into bushfires and floods. Read together, they return to the same themes again and again.

The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission examined the Black Saturday fires, in which 173 people died. Its findings covered warnings, information flows between agencies, the relationship between state and local decision-making, and the need for clear, timely public information. The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, which reported in October 2020 after the Black Summer fires, made 80 recommendations, many of them about national coordination, shared situational awareness, consistent warnings and data that can be trusted and shared across jurisdictions.

Across these and many state-level reviews, five themes recur: 1 Information doesn't move fast enough between agencies, levels of command and the community. 2 Situational awareness is fragmented, with different agencies looking at different pictures of the same event. 3 Warnings must be timely, consistent and actionable, reaching everyone at risk.

4 Interoperability matters, from radios to data standards to shared training. 5 Capability must be visible nationally, so resources can be shared quickly when events cross borders.

Every one of these themes is, at its heart, about intelligence: collecting the right information, making sense of it quickly, and getting it to the people who need to act. That is why this series looks at industries that have built their operating models around exactly those problems. What each industry brings Defence: intelligence, decisions and command Defence has spent a century refining how to gather intelligence, make decisions under uncertainty, command dispersed teams and operate jointly across services.

Its doctrine of intelligence preparation, decision cycles, mission command and after-action learning maps directly onto multi-agency emergency response. The link is already real: thousands of Australian Defence Force personnel supported state agencies during Black Summer. Three ideas worth borrowing from Defence: ■ Intelligence as a core function, with dedicated analysts and products, rather than an extra task for busy operations staff.

■ Mission command, so crews and sector commanders can act on clear intent when communications fail. ■ Honest readiness reporting, so leaders know what capability is actually available, not just what is on paper. Mining: remote operations, fatigue and critical controls Australian mining leads the world in remote operations centres, autonomous haulage, fatigue science and critical control management.

Mines are remote, hazardous and run around the clock. Many sit in bushfire-, cyclone-and flood-prone country and run their own emergency response teams. Few industries operate in conditions closer to those of a rural fire service.

Three ideas worth borrowing from mining: ■ Integrated operations centres that plan and run a whole region as one system. ■ Critical control management, focused on the few controls that prevent fatalities and verified on every shift. ■ Fatigue science, including roster design, travel time and objective detection of fatigue.

Oil and gas: process safety and readiness Oil and gas built modern process safety after disasters such as Piper Alpha and Deepwater Horizon. It pioneered the safety case, bow-tie analysis, leading indicators, digital twins and condition-based maintenance. Its central lesson is uncomfortable but vital: good injury statistics do not mean a catastrophe can't happen.

Three ideas worth borrowing from oil and gas: ■ Separate major-hazard risk from personal injury statistics, and report it at board level. ■ Leading indicators that warn the system is under strain before something goes wrong. ■ Stop-work authority, so anyone can halt unsafe work without fear of blame.

Autonomous systems: machines into harm's way From drones and remotely operated robots to autonomous trucks and optionally piloted aircraft, autonomy offers something emergency services have never had at scale: the chance to put machines rather than people into the most dangerous situations, while keeping people in command.

Three ideas worth borrowing from autonomy: ■ Start with the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks where machines add the most safety value. ■ Human–machine teaming, with people firmly in command of critical decisions. ■ Secure command links and safe failure modes, so a machine that loses contact does nothing dangerous.

“We shouldn't solve problems other industries have already solved. We should adapt their answers deliberately.” A NSW Rural Fire Service fire line at night. The people we send into harm's way deserve the best thinking from every sector.

Source: Photo by Darren Covington What transfers, and what doesn't Not everything from these industries belongs in a fire service. Being clear about the difference helps leaders adopt lessons with confidence. What transfers well ■ Disciplines, such as intelligence preparation, critical control management, process safety thinking and after-action learning.

These are ways of thinking that can be adapted to any high-consequence organisation. ■ Operating structures, such as integrated operations centres, joint planning and readiness reporting. ■ Technologies that have been proven in harsh conditions, including remote operations, telematics, sensors, drones and autonomous equipment.

■ Security practices for connected and operational systems, which all four industries have had to develop. What needs adapting ■ Command cultures. Military command and corporate line management don't map directly onto a system that relies on volunteers, multiple agencies and community trust.

■ Business cases. Productivity is not the main measure of success. Public safety, resilience and community confidence are.

■ Pace of change. Mining and energy companies can standardise across sites quickly. Fire services operate across eight jurisdictions with different legislation and structures.

What doesn't transfer ■ Secrecy. Defence protects information from the public. Emergency services must share as much as possible with the public, while protecting sensitive data.

■ Profit-driven trade-offs. Decisions about community safety can't be made on cost alone. What "intelligence-driven" actually means "Intelligence-driven" is easy to say and harder to define.

In this series it means an organisation where decisions at every level, from the State Control Centre to the crew on the fireground, are informed by timely, trusted and relevant information, and where the organisation learns continuously from each event. In practice, an intelligence-driven fire service has five building blocks: 1 Sensing: a layered network of satellites, cameras, aircraft, drones, weather stations, sensors, Triple Zero data and community reports. 2 Sense-making: people and tools, including AI, that turn raw data into assessments, forecasts and options.

3 Decision rights: clear authority for who decides what, consistent with AIIMS, so better information leads to faster action rather than more debate. 4 Action: integrated dispatch, resource management and warnings that turn decisions into effects quickly. 5 Learning: after-action reviews and data analysis that improve models, doctrine and training after every event.

Underneath all five sit trusted data, secure systems and skilled people. Technology alone doesn't make an organisation intelligence-driven. The way it organises, decides and learns does.

The thread that runs through every lesson: cyber security Cyber security at the core: secure by design, not bolted on. Source: Darren Covington There is a reason cyber security sits at the centre of this series rather than at the end of it. Every lesson that follows makes fire services more connected: shared operating pictures, remote operations centres, digital twins, sensor networks, autonomous systems and AI decision support.

Each connection is also an attack surface. All four industries learned this the hard way. Defence assumes its networks are contested.

Mining and oil and gas now treat operational technology (the systems that control physical equipment) as critical security assets. Autonomous systems are only as trustworthy as their command links. The lesson for fire services is direct: an intelligence-driven fire service has to be secure by design, or it will fail at the worst possible moment.

In practice, that means five principles we'll return to in every article: 1 Secure by design. Security requirements are set before systems are bought or built, not added afterwards. 2 Zero trust.

No user, device or data feed is trusted by default, including those inside the network. 3 Resilience over perfection. Systems are designed to keep operating, degrade gracefully and recover quickly when (not if) they are attacked or disrupted.

4 Sovereign, governed data. Sensitive community, workforce and operational data is protected, held under Australian jurisdiction and used only for its intended purpose. 5 People as the first line of defence.

Career staff and volunteers are trained, supported and equipped to recognise and report cyber threats. These principles align with the Australian Signals Directorate's Essential Eight mitigation strategies, which give agencies a practical baseline, and with Australia's critical infrastructure security framework.

Why emergency services are attractive targets Emergency services are attractive targets for several reasons. They hold sensitive information about communities, vulnerable people and their own workforce. Their systems must be available at all times, which makes them vulnerable to ransomware and denial-of-service attacks designed to extort payment.

Their public warnings carry authority, which makes them attractive for anyone seeking to cause confusion. And they depend on many partners and suppliers, each of which is a potential entry point. The consequences of a successful attack are also unusually serious.

A data breach in most organisations is costly and embarrassing. A loss of dispatch or warning systems during a major emergency could put lives at risk. The Essential Eight in plain English The Australian Signals Directorate's Essential Eight is a set of mitigation strategies designed to make it much harder for attackers to compromise systems.

In plain English, they are: 1 Application control: only approved software can run. 2 Patch applications: fix known weaknesses in software quickly. 3 Configure Microsoft Office macro settings: stop malicious macros from running.

4 User application hardening: turn off features in browsers and applications that attackers commonly exploit. 5 Restrict administrative privileges: limit who has powerful system access, and check it regularly. 6 Patch operating systems: keep the underlying systems up to date.

7 Multi-factor authentication: require more than a password to log in, especially for remote and privileged access. 8 Regular backups: keep backups of important data and systems, and test that they can be restored. None of these is glamorous, but together they stop a large share of common attacks.

For safety-critical systems, agencies should aim for higher maturity and add protections specific to operational technology, as later articles in this series explain. Working as one with Police, Ambulance and SES Fire services never respond alone. In every major event, the community depends on several agencies working together, and the lessons in this series apply across all of them.

■ Police often hold overall emergency coordination roles, manage evacuations and road closures, and lead searches for missing people. They need the same predictive picture of fire and flood to plan evacuations before roads are cut. ■ Ambulance services need early warning of where demand will surge, which aged care facilities and hospitals are at risk, and where it is safe to send crews.

Their patient and demand data, appropriately protected, can also tell other agencies where people are being harmed. ■ SES units lead flood and storm response in most jurisdictions, and many of their volunteers also serve in fire brigades. Shared rostering and fatigue visibility prevent the same people being counted twice.

■ Local government, utilities and transport agencies hold critical information about roads, power, water and telecommunications, and are essential partners in both response and recovery. An intelligence-driven fire service makes its information useful to all of these partners, and uses theirs in return. That requires shared data standards, agreed access rules, joint training and a common understanding of who

decides what. The technology is the easy part. Building trust between agencies, so that each is confident sharing its data and relying on the others', takes sustained leadership.

The human side: career staff and volunteers Every lesson in this series will succeed or fail on how it affects people. Career firefighters, volunteers, incident management teams and support staff are the ones who will use new systems, change their routines and live with the consequences. Three principles should guide any change: 1 Protect people first.

The strongest case for an intelligence-driven fire service is that it brings more people home safely. Fatigue management, crew tracking and better warnings should be designed and explained in those terms. 2 Reduce the burden.

Volunteers give their time freely. Systems that save them time, such as automated availability, simpler reporting and better information on the way to an incident, will be welcomed. Systems that add paperwork will not.

3 Share the design. Crews, brigade captains, unions and volunteer associations understand the realities of the work better than anyone. Involving them from the start leads to better systems and faster adoption.

There will also be new roles: intelligence analysts, data specialists, drone pilots, digital twin modellers and cyber security specialists. Some will be filled by recruiting from outside the sector. Many can be filled by developing existing staff and volunteers who are already interested in these fields, which keeps operational knowledge at the heart of the new capabilities.

Using AI responsibly Artificial intelligence features in several of the lessons in this series, from detection and prediction to decision support. Used well, it can save time and lives. Used carelessly, it can introduce errors, bias and new security risks.

Emergency services should approach it with the same discipline they apply to any safety-critical capability. Useful guardrails include: ■ Human accountability. AI recommends; people decide.

Every AI-influenced decision should have a named person responsible for it. ■ Testing against extremes. Models trained on past events must be tested against conditions they haven't seen, because climate change means future events will differ from the past.

■ Transparency. Users should understand what a model is doing, how confident it is and when not to rely on it. ■ Data quality and fairness.

Models are only as good as their data. Gaps in data about remote, culturally diverse or disadvantaged communities can lead to gaps in protection. ■ Security.

AI systems can be attacked through poisoned data or manipulated inputs, and must be protected accordingly. Australian frameworks provide a starting point, including the Australian Government's Voluntary AI Safety Standard (2024) and the Digital Transformation Agency's Policy for the responsible use of AI in government (2024).

One mission, eight jurisdictions This series is written for fire services in every Australian state and territory. Their agencies, structures and hazards differ: savanna fire and cyclones in the Northern Territory, flood and bushfire in New South Wales and Queensland, heat and grassfire in South Australia, and more. The mission, though, is shared, and so is the opportunity.

One mission. Eight jurisdictions. Source: Darren Covington The lessons in this series are not about centralising control.

They are about common standards, interoperable systems and shared intelligence that let each jurisdiction do its job better and help the others when events cross borders, as they increasingly do. National bodies such as AFAC, NAFC, NEMA and the Bureau of Meteorology already provide much of the connective tissue. The national picture Each jurisdiction organises its fire and emergency services differently, reflecting its history, geography and hazards: ■ New South Wales has Fire and Rescue NSW in urban areas, the NSW Rural Fire Service, a large volunteer-based organisation covering most of the state's land area, and the NSW State Emergency Service.

■ Victoria has Fire Rescue Victoria, established in 2020, alongside the Country Fire Authority and the Victoria State Emergency Service. ■ Queensland reorganised its fire services in 2024, creating the Queensland Fire Department, which includes Rural Fire Service Queensland, while the SES operates alongside them. ■ South Australia has the Metropolitan Fire Service, the Country Fire Service and the SES.

■ Western Australia's Department of Fire and Emergency Services brings career and volunteer fire and emergency services together in one department. ■ Tasmania has the Tasmania Fire Service and the Tasmania State Emergency Service.

■ The Northern Territory has the NT Fire and Rescue Service and Bushfires NT, which manages fire across vast savanna landscapes. ■ The Australian Capital Territory's Emergency Services Agency includes ACT Fire & Rescue, the ACT Rural Fire Service, the ACT State Emergency Service and the ACT Ambulance Service. This diversity is a strength.

It allows each jurisdiction to fit its services to local conditions, and it creates natural experiments from which others can learn. The challenge is to make sure that when events cross borders, or when resources are shared nationally, systems and data work together. Common standards, rather than common structures, are the key.

The cost of standing still It is tempting to see an intelligence-driven fire service as a long-term aspiration. The risks of delay, though, are immediate. ■ More severe events with the same tools.

Each season brings conditions that stretch existing systems further. Information gaps that were manageable in the past become dangerous when fires move faster and floods rise higher. ■ Rising cost of catching up.

Every year that new systems are added without common standards makes future integration harder and more expensive. ■ Workforce strain. Without better fatigue management, rostering and support, the pressure on career staff and volunteers will grow, making recruitment and retention harder still.

■ Growing cyber exposure. Agencies are already becoming more digital. Doing so without a security-by-design approach increases the chance of a damaging incident at the worst possible time.

■ Falling public confidence. Communities increasingly compare emergency information with the real-time services they use every day. Warnings that arrive late, or conflict between agencies, erode trust.

Standing still is not a neutral choice. It is a decision to accept growing risk. How to use this series Different readers will take different things from these articles: ■ Boards and ministers can use the maturity model, the board questions and the cyber security principles to test their organisation's direction and investment priorities.

■ Chief officers and executives can use the lessons and roadmaps to shape strategy, investment cases and partnerships. ■ Operational leaders can focus on the practical lessons, such as critical controls, fatigue, decision cycles and autonomy, and how they would work on the ground. ■ Technology and security leaders can use the cyber security sections to make sure new capabilities are secure by design.

■ Volunteers and frontline crews can use the series to understand what may change, and to contribute their own experience to the design.

Each article stands alone, but the full value comes from seeing how the lessons fit together into the operating model set out in the final article. Illustrative scenario: the same fire day, two ways This scenario is illustrative. It contrasts a typical response today with what an intelligence-driven approach could look like.

Today. A dry lightning storm passes over a remote area in the afternoon. Several ignitions are reported over the next few hours, some by the public, some by aircraft.

The information arrives through different channels and is entered into different systems. The incident management team pieces together the picture from phone calls, radio reports and maps. Crews are dispatched to the fires that are known about.

One ignition in rough country isn't confirmed until the next morning, by which time it has grown and is threatening a small community. Warnings are issued, but some residents only learn of the threat from neighbours. Intelligence-driven.

The same storm is tracked in real time. Lightning strike data, satellite hotspot detection and camera networks are fused automatically, and each likely ignition is flagged with a confidence level within minutes. Fire behaviour models estimate how each fire could spread overnight, and the system ranks them by the risk to communities and assets.

The duty officer reviews the assessment and pre-positions crews and aircraft for first light, with fatigue and qualifications checked automatically. The community at highest risk receives an early Advice message through the agency's app and AusAlert. The fire in rough country is attacked at first light while it is still small.

The difference isn't heroic effort. It is information arriving sooner, being understood faster, and reaching the right people in time to act. Measuring progress: a maturity model Leaders need a way to judge where their organisation is today and what the next step should be.

A simple five-level maturity model can help: 1 Reactive: information is gathered during events, mostly by phone and radio, in separate systems. 2 Connected: core systems share some data, and a common operating picture exists for major events. 3 Predictive: models and analytics are used routinely to forecast risk and pre-position resources.

4 Integrated: fire, Police, Ambulance and SES work from one picture, with shared standards and joint planning. 5 Intelligence-driven: decisions at every level are informed by trusted, real-time intelligence, the organisation learns systematically from each event, and security and resilience are built into every system. Most Australian agencies sit somewhere between levels two and three, with pockets of excellence.

The goal of this series is to help them move up the scale deliberately and securely. What to measure along the way A maturity model is only useful if progress can be measured. Practical indicators include: ■ Time to awareness: how long it takes from an ignition or significant change to that information reaching decision-makers.

■ Time to warning: how long it takes from a decision to warn to the warning reaching people at risk.

■ Shared picture: the number of agencies and partners contributing to and using the common operating picture. ■ Data quality: the accuracy and completeness of key data, such as volunteer availability, qualifications and appliance status. ■ Safety outcomes: injuries, near misses and fatigue exceedances among crews.

■ Learning: the share of after-action review recommendations that are implemented and checked. ■ Security: Essential Eight maturity for critical systems, and the time taken to restore them in exercises. These measures should be reported to executives and boards alongside traditional measures such as response times, so that progress towards an intelligence-driven model is visible and accountable.

Barriers to watch for ■ Fragmented systems that were bought separately and don't talk to each other. ■ Short funding cycles that favour visible equipment over data and integration. ■ Cultural resistance to change, especially if it feels imposed from outside.

■ Skills gaps in data, analytics and cyber security, which are in high demand across the economy. ■ Cross-border complexity, with different legislation, systems and priorities in each jurisdiction. Each of these can be overcome, and the industries in this series show how.

But they need to be named and planned for from the start. Getting started: a first-year plan For leaders who want to act now rather than wait for the end of the series, a practical first year might look like this: First 90 days ■ Assess where the organisation sits on the maturity model, with input from operations, IT, safety and volunteers. ■ Map the information flows for a recent major event: what was known, when, by whom, and where it got stuck.

■ Review cyber security for the systems that matter most during an emergency, starting with dispatch and warnings. Months three to six ■ Choose two or three priority lessons from this series that address the organisation's biggest risks. ■ Build relationships with Defence, mining, energy and research organisations in your region.

■ Appoint executive owners for intelligence and for cyber resilience. Months six to twelve ■ Run pilots for the priority lessons, with clear measures and an honest evaluation.

■ Close the highest-risk gaps against the Essential Eight. ■ Share results with partner agencies and other jurisdictions, so good ideas spread. What this series is and isn't This series isn't arguing that fire services should become military organisations or run like mining companies.

The community-centred, volunteer-supported ethos of Australian emergency services is a strength to protect, and it is what earns public trust. It is arguing that where proven methods, technologies and lessons exist, we should adapt them deliberately rather than reinvent them slowly. Each article focuses on what is transferable, what needs to change for the emergency services context, and what leaders can do next.

The series 1 Learning from industries that operate at the edge: why fire services should look beyond their own sector 2 Lessons from Defence: command, intelligence and decision superiority 3 Lessons from Mining: remote operations, fatigue and critical controls 4 Lessons from Oil & Gas: process safety, digital twins and readiness 5 Lessons from Autonomy: drones, robotics and human–machine teaming 6 Bringing it together: an operating model for the intelligence-driven fire service What leaders should do next ■ Map your borrowable lessons. Identify which of your organisation's biggest challenges (fatigue, readiness, situational awareness, safety) other industries have already solved.

■ Build cross-industry relationships. Invite Defence, mining and energy operators in your region to share how they run operations centres, manage fatigue and secure operational technology. ■ Put cyber security on the executive agenda now.

Make it a standing item for every digital, data and technology decision, not a compliance check at the end. ■ Start the conversation with your workforce. Career staff and volunteers will make or break any change.

Involve them early. Over the next five articles I'll look at each industry in turn, then bring the lessons together into a practical operating model and roadmap for the intelligence-driven fire service. Questions for boards and executives ■ How quickly does critical information move from the field to decision-makers, and from decision-makers to the community?

■ Where are we on the maturity model today, and where do we want to be in five years? ■ Which lessons from Defence, mining, oil and gas, and autonomy are most relevant to our biggest risks?

■ Do we have an executive owner for intelligence, and another for cyber resilience? ■ How are we involving career staff and volunteers in shaping the changes ahead? Glossary ■ AIIMS: the Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System, the framework most Australian agencies use to manage incidents.

■ Common operating picture: a shared, real-time view of an event that all agencies can see. ■ Essential Eight: the Australian Signals Directorate's baseline set of cyber security mitigation strategies. ■ Intelligence: information that has been collected, analysed and assessed so it can support decisions.

■ Operational technology: systems that monitor or control physical equipment, such as vehicles, pumps and sensors. ■ Zero trust: a security approach in which no user, device or data feed is trusted by default. Further reading ■ Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, State of the Climate 2024.

■ 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, Final Report (2010). ■ Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, Report (2020). ■ Australian Signals Directorate, Essential Eight Maturity Model.

■ AFAC, Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS). Which industry do you think has the most to teach emergency services, and why? #EmergencyManagement #FireServices #Intelligence #CyberSecurity #Defence #Mining #OilAndGas #Autonomy #Innovation #ClimateResilience #Australia Darren Covington writes on intelligence-driven emergency services, climate resilience, technology and cyber security in Australia.

Photo credits: Darren Covington. Unsplash photos are used under the Unsplash Licence. Other photos and graphics © Darren Covington.