Lessons from Defence: Command, Intelligence and Decision Superiority

■ Defence has spent a century working out how to decide faster than a changing situation, with incomplete information and dispersed teams. That is the core challenge of emergency management. ■ Seven Defence practices transfer directly: intelligence before operations, faster decision cycles (the OODA loop), mission command, joint operations, persistent sensing, wargaming with after-action learning, and honest readiness reporting.

■ Defence assumes its networks are contested. Fire services should too. Command, communications and intelligence systems must be designed to work when degraded or under attack.

■ The goal is the discipline, not the uniform: emergency services must keep their civilian, community-centred character. ■ This edition adds how Defence and emergency services already work together, the intelligence cycle, writing good intent, after-action reviews, a compound-event scenario, a cyber tabletop exercise and a staged roadmap. Defence organisations have been thinking about one problem for over a century: how do you make good decisions faster than a changing situation, with incomplete information, while commanding dispersed teams in a dangerous environment?

Replace "the adversary" with "the fire", "the flood" or "the storm", and that is the central challenge of emergency management. The link is already real. During Black Summer, thousands of Australian Defence Force personnel supported state agencies through Operation Bushfire Assist with logistics, aviation, engineering and evacuation support.

It was the largest peacetime domestic ADF operation for a natural disaster, and the first time in Australia's history that Army Reserves were compulsorily called out. The question now is not only how Defence can support emergency services in a crisis. It is what fire services can learn from how Defence thinks.

2019–20 Operation Bushfire Assist 1st compulsory call-out of Army Reserves in Australia's history 7 Defence practices that transfer directly Defence personnel on the move. During Black Summer, the ADF supported state agencies with logistics, aviation, engineering and evacuation. Source: Photo by Diego González, Unsplash Why Defence thinking applies At first glance, a fire brigade and an army have little in common.

One protects communities from natural hazards; the other prepares for armed conflict. But underneath, both face the same core problem: acting effectively in a dangerous, fast-changing situation where information is incomplete, communications are unreliable and the cost of error is measured in lives. Defence has spent more than a century, and enormous resources, developing ways to manage that problem.

Its doctrine on intelligence, command, planning and learning has been refined through operations, exercises and hard experience. Much of it is published, taught and continuously updated. Emergency services can draw on that body of knowledge without adopting military structures or culture.

Several features make Defence thinking particularly relevant: ■ It is built for uncertainty. Military planning assumes the situation will change and plans for several possible futures, not one.

■ It separates intent from instructions. Leaders explain what needs to be achieved and why, so teams can adapt when plans fail. ■ It treats information as a capability.

Intelligence, communications and information assurance are planned, resourced and protected like any other capability. ■ It learns deliberately. Exercises, red teams and after-action reviews are routine, not optional.

How Defence and emergency services already work together The relationship between Defence and emergency services is not new. Under the Defence Assistance to the Civil Community (DACC) arrangements, Defence can support civil authorities when an emergency exceeds their capacity, from local assistance during a flood to large-scale national support. Black Summer showed what that support can look like at scale.

Through Operation Bushfire Assist, the ADF provided aviation, logistics, engineering, accommodation, evacuation and planning support to state agencies. Since then, Defence has continued to support responses to floods and other disasters. The experience has also raised important questions.

Defence's primary role is national defence, and frequent domestic deployments draw on people and equipment needed for that role. State and territory agencies remain responsible for emergency response, with Defence in support. That makes it all the more important for emergency services to build their own capability, borrowing Defence's methods rather than relying on Defence's people.

Practical areas for closer partnership include: ■ Liaison officers embedded in state control centres before and during high-risk periods. ■ Shared doctrine and training, particularly in planning, intelligence and command. ■ Joint exercises that test how Defence support would be requested, received and integrated.

■ Information sharing, including geospatial products and logistics data, under clear security arrangements. Lesson 1: Intelligence comes before operations Military planning begins with intelligence preparation of the battlespace: a structured analysis of terrain, weather, the threat and its likely courses of action, done before forces are committed. Commanders don't wait for contact to start thinking.

They build an understanding of the environment and the most likely and most dangerous scenarios in advance, then update it continuously. For fire services: "intelligence preparation of the fireground" would systematically analyse fuel, terrain, weather, assets at risk, access and egress routes, vulnerable communities and likely fire behaviour scenarios before ignition, and refresh that analysis as the event develops. Many agencies already have strong predictive services and fire behaviour analysts.

The opportunity is to make intelligence a core function equal to operations and logistics, fully integrated into every incident management team, with dedicated intelligence officers at state, regional and incident level. What good looks like: ■ A standing intelligence picture for every high-risk area, refreshed before each high-fire-danger day. ■ Most-likely and most-dangerous scenarios written up and briefed, not just a single forecast.

■ Intelligence products shared with Police, Ambulance and SES in the same format, at the same time. The intelligence cycle Defence organises intelligence work as a cycle, which provides a useful model for emergency services: 1 Direction: commanders state what they need to know to make decisions, such as where the fire will be at 1800, or which roads will flood first. 2 Collection: sensors, aircraft, crews and other sources gather the information needed to answer those questions.

3 Processing: raw data is organised, checked and put into usable form. 4 Analysis: analysts assess what the information means, what is likely to happen next, and how confident they are. 5 Dissemination: the assessment reaches the people who need it, in a form they can use, in time to act.

6 Feedback: users say whether the product helped, and what they need next. The most important step is the first. Intelligence that isn't driven by the decisions commanders actually face tends to produce interesting information that nobody uses.

What a good intelligence product looks like A good intelligence product for an incident management team is short, clear and decision-focused. It might include: ■ The bottom line: the key judgement in one or two sentences. ■ The most likely scenario for the next 6, 12 and 24 hours, and the most dangerous one.

■ Key uncertainties, and what information would reduce them. ■ Implications for crews, communities, infrastructure and partner agencies. ■ Confidence levels, so decision-makers know how much weight to give each judgement.

Lesson 2: Decision speed, or the OODA loop Military strategist John Boyd described decision-making as a cycle: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Whoever cycles faster, and more accurately, gains the advantage. The insight is not just about speed.

It is about shortening the time between the situation changing and your response changing.

Decision advantage on the fireground: the discipline, not the uniform. Source: Darren Covington For fire services: fire behaviour changes in minutes. Every stage of the loop can be accelerated: ■ Observe: AI-enabled sensing from satellites, cameras, drones and ground sensors, combined with Triple Zero patterns and verified social media, detects change sooner.

■ Orient: integrated common operating pictures and predictive models turn raw data into meaning, so everyone shares the same understanding. ■ Decide: decision-support tools present options and their likely consequences, so incident controllers decide with better information and less cognitive load. ■ Act: integrated dispatch, aviation tasking and targeted public warnings through AusAlert, Australia's new cell broadcast system, shorten the time from decision to effect.

Each minute saved could mean a crew moved out of danger or a community warned earlier. “Fire behaviour changes in minutes. The organisation that completes the decision cycle faster protects more people.” Where time is lost today In most emergency responses, the slowest parts of the decision cycle are not the decisions themselves.

They are the steps around them: ■ Information arriving late because it is passed by phone or radio and then re-entered into other systems. ■ Different pictures in different agencies, which must be reconciled before anyone can act. ■ Unclear decision rights, so decisions wait for someone with authority to become available.

■ Slow dissemination, with warnings and orders passing through several hands before they reach the people who need them.

Measuring the time taken at each step during exercises and real events, and then targeting the biggest delays, is one of the most practical ways to speed up the loop. Speeding up the loop without cutting corners Speed is only valuable if decisions remain sound. Defence's experience offers several ways to move faster without taking reckless risks: ■ Pre-planned responses.

Decide in advance what will happen when certain triggers are met, such as a fire crossing a ridge or a river reaching a set height. When the trigger is reached, action follows immediately. ■ Delegated authority.

Push decisions to the lowest level that has the information and competence to make them. ■ Parallel planning. Share draft plans early so that teams can start preparing while details are finalised.

■ Good-enough decisions. In fast-moving events, a sound decision made now is often better than a perfect one made too late. ■ Built-in review points, so early decisions are revisited as better information arrives.

Trigger points are already used in many evacuation and flood plans. Extending them across fire, flood and storm response, and linking them to live data, is one of the most practical ways to shorten the decision cycle. Lesson 3: Mission command Modern militaries use mission command: leaders give clear intent (what needs to be achieved and why) and trust teams on the ground to decide how, especially when communications fail or conditions change faster than headquarters can react.

For fire services: when radio networks drop out and conditions change rapidly, crews and sector commanders need clear intent and the authority to adapt. AIIMS already supports this. Technology should reinforce it, not undermine it, by giving frontline leaders the same intelligence picture as headquarters rather than just more instructions.

The risk with digital command systems is the opposite: that they encourage centralised micro-management. Good design keeps decisions at the right level. Writing good intent Mission command depends on clear intent.

A good statement of intent explains the purpose, the key tasks and the desired end state, so that people can make sensible decisions when the plan no longer fits the situation. Illustrative example: "Our purpose is to protect the township of Eastvale and keep the Main Road open for evacuation until 2000. Key tasks are to hold the fire south of Creek Road and to protect the aged care facility.

By last light, I want the township intact, the road open and all crews accounted for in safe locations. If communications fail, protect life first, then the evacuation route, then property." With intent like this, a sector commander who loses contact with the incident control centre still knows what matters most and can act on it. Command under stress Defence invests heavily in preparing commanders for the human realities of command: stress, fatigue, information overload and the weight of decisions that affect lives.

Research and experience show that decision quality falls when people are exhausted, overloaded or isolated. Emergency services face the same pressures in long campaign events, often with commanders who are also volunteers.

Practices worth adopting: ■ Planned rest for commanders, with deputies empowered to decide while the commander sleeps. ■ Structured decision-making for critical choices, such as a short checklist of options, risks and intent, to reduce the effect of stress. ■ Decision logs that record what was decided, why, and on what information, which support both accountability and learning.

■ Peer support and debriefing after difficult decisions, recognising the moral weight commanders carry. Handovers Shift changes are moments of risk. Information is lost, assumptions are not passed on, and new teams can take time to understand the situation.

Defence uses structured handovers to reduce that risk, and so do hospitals and aviation. A good emergency services handover covers the current situation, the commander's intent, key risks and uncertainties, resources and their state, outstanding tasks and decisions pending, with time for questions. Supported by a shared operating picture and a decision log, handovers can become faster and far more reliable.

Lesson 4: Joint and coalition operations Defence has spent decades on joint operations across Army, Navy and Air Force, and coalition operations with allies. Common data standards, shared networks, interoperable command systems and shared training are treated as essential, not optional. For fire services: major events involve fire agencies, Police, Ambulance, SES, local government, utilities, Defence, and interstate and international deployments.

A joint approach means: ■ Shared data standards so information moves between agencies without manual re-entry. ■ Interoperable communications, including progress on the national Public Safety Mobile Broadband program. ■ Common training and exercising, so people have worked together before the real event.

■ A single operating picture across all agencies, with role-based access. Liaison and joint planning Defence relies heavily on liaison officers: trusted people from one organisation embedded in another, who understand both and can make connections quickly. In emergency management, liaison officers from Police, Ambulance, SES, utilities, local government and Defence already play this role in many control centres.

The lesson is to treat liaison as a skilled role, with training, clear authority and access to each organisation's systems, rather than as a seat at the table. Lesson 5: ISR, an always-on sensing network Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) gives commanders persistent awareness through layered sensors: satellites, aircraft, drones and ground sensors, fused into one picture.

A firefighting helicopter working above smoke in New South Wales. Aircraft are suppression assets and sensors at the same time, and their observations belong in the shared picture. Source: Photo by Darren Covington For fire services: the same layered approach applies.

Satellite hotspot services, AI camera networks, aircraft and drone imagery, weather stations and community reports can be fused into persistent awareness of fire, flood and storm. The aim is to see ignitions and changes early enough to act while they are still manageable. Collection management Military ISR is coordinated through collection management: deciding which sensors should look where, and when, to answer the most important questions.

Without it, aircraft and drones can end up collecting the same imagery while critical gaps go unfilled. Emergency services could apply the same discipline, with an intelligence officer prioritising aviation, drone and satellite tasking against the incident controller's information needs. Lesson 6: Wargaming, red teaming and after-action reviews Militaries routinely wargame scenarios, deliberately challenge their own plans through red teaming, and run disciplined after-action reviews that feed lessons back into doctrine and training.

For fire services: digital twins and simulation can be used to wargame catastrophic fire days, compound fire-then-flood events and multi-agency evacuations before they happen. Red teams can test assumptions, including how a plan holds up if communications, power or IT systems fail. Structured after-action reviews then feed lessons straight back into models, doctrine and training, so each season makes the system smarter.

Running a good after-action review The United States Army popularised a simple structure for after-action reviews built around four questions: 1 What was supposed to happen? 2 What actually happened? 3 Why was there a difference?

4 What will we do differently next time? The value lies in the discipline: reviews happen soon after the event, everyone's view is heard regardless of rank, the focus is on learning rather than blame, and actions are tracked until they are complete. Many emergency

services already run debriefs. The step change is to connect them to data, so that the review can compare what people believed at the time with what the systems recorded, and feed the lessons into models and training. Lesson 7: Logistics and readiness reporting Defence measures readiness constantly and honestly: what capability is actually available today, not just what's on the asset register.

For fire services: real-time visibility of appliances, aircraft, crews, qualifications and fatigue states, at state and national level, would transform surge planning and interstate deployments. Readiness levels Defence describes readiness in levels, from units that can deploy immediately to those that need weeks or months to prepare. Fire services could adopt a similar approach for high-risk periods, defining which crews, appliances, aircraft and specialist teams are at immediate readiness, which are at short notice, and which are recovering.

Combined with fatigue and maintenance data, this gives incident controllers and state controllers an honest view of what they can call on. NSW Rural Fire Service tankers lined up at a staging area. Readiness should be measured honestly: what is actually available, not what is on the register.

Source: Photo by Darren Covington Building an intelligence capability Creating an intelligence function is not just a matter of appointing analysts. Defence builds intelligence capability across three dimensions, and emergency services can do the same. People ■ Dedicated roles at state, regional and incident level, with clear responsibilities and authority.

■ Career pathways that let people develop as analysts over years, rather than rotating through intelligence for a single season. ■ Training in analytical methods, structured judgement, briefing and the use of data tools, alongside fire behaviour, hydrology and meteorology.

■ Diversity of background, combining operational experience with skills in geospatial analysis, data science and research. ■ Volunteer pathways, because many volunteers bring relevant professional skills and could contribute to intelligence work during campaign events. Products ■ Standard formats for situation assessments, forecasts and briefings, so users know what to expect.

■ A regular battle rhythm, with products timed to support planning meetings and shift changes. ■ Confidence language, such as "likely" or "highly likely", used consistently so decision-makers understand the strength of each judgement. ■ Products for partners, tailored for Police, Ambulance, SES and local government, as well as for the incident management team.

Platforms ■ A shared analytical environment where analysts can access weather, fire behaviour, satellite, geospatial, dispatch and resource data together. ■ Tools for fusion and prediction, including AI where it is proven and assured. ■ Secure collaboration across agencies and jurisdictions, so analysts can work together during cross-border events.

■ Archiving and learning, so products and outcomes can be compared after the event to improve future analysis. The common operating picture: lessons from joint command Defence has invested heavily in joint command systems that give commanders a shared view of their own forces, the environment and the threat. Several lessons from that experience apply to emergency services' common operating pictures: ■ Design for the decision, not the display.

A picture that shows everything is as unhelpful as one that shows nothing. Each user group needs views tailored to its decisions. ■ Show confidence and currency.

Every item on the picture should show how reliable it is and how recently it was updated. Stale information presented as current is dangerous. ■ Be clear about authority.

Who can add, change or remove information on the shared picture must be clearly defined. ■ Plan for disconnection. Units that lose connection should still have the last known picture and be able to update it when they reconnect.

■ Protect it. The common operating picture is a high-value target. Access control, audit trails and integrity checks are essential.

How to wargame a Catastrophic day A wargame doesn't need expensive simulation to be valuable. A well-run tabletop exercise can expose weaknesses in plans, relationships and systems. A simple approach: 1 Set the objective.

Decide what you want to test, such as evacuation decision-making, resource allocation across several fires, or the loss of a critical system. 2 Build the scenario from real data: a past fire day, a plausible worst case, or a compound event. 3 Bring the right people.

Include fire, Police, Ambulance, SES, local government, utilities and, where relevant, Defence. 4 Assign a red team to introduce realistic complications, such as a wind change, a communications failure, misinformation on social media or a cyber incident. 5 Play it in time steps, with decisions recorded at each step.

6 Review honestly using the after-action review questions, focusing on what the system did rather than individual performance. 7 Track the actions until they are complete, and test them in the next exercise. Digital twins and simulation tools can make wargames more realistic over time, but the discipline matters more than the technology.

Information operations: managing what the public hears Defence recognises that the information environment is part of every operation. What people believe, and how quickly they believe it, can shape outcomes as much as physical actions. Emergency services face the same reality during disasters.

During major events, false or outdated information spreads quickly on social media: fake evacuation orders, wrong road closures, rumours about fire locations, and scams targeting affected communities. Some of it is malicious; most is well-meaning but wrong. Either way, it can put people in danger and undermine trust in official warnings.

Lessons from Defence's approach to the information environment: ■ Monitor continuously. Track what is being said about the event across social media, news and community channels, so emerging rumours are spotted early. ■ Assess the risk.

Not every false claim needs a response. Focus on information that could lead people to unsafe decisions. ■ Respond quickly and consistently, through trusted channels and voices, including local leaders and partner agencies.

■ Be the most reliable source. Timely, accurate and specific official information leaves less room for rumours. ■ Protect official channels from impersonation and takeover, with strong account security and rapid reporting of fake accounts.

Logistics: the discipline behind every response Defence has a saying that amateurs talk about tactics while professionals study logistics. Large fires and floods are logistics problems as much as operational ones: feeding, accommodating, fuelling and resupplying thousands of people across long distances, often to places cut off by fire or water. Defence logistics principles that transfer well: ■ Visibility of the whole supply chain, from warehouses to the front line, so shortages are seen before they bite.

■ Forward staging of supplies, fuel and equipment before demand peaks. ■ Standardisation, so equipment and supplies from different agencies and jurisdictions are interchangeable. ■ Planning for the cut-off, with stockpiles and alternative routes for communities that may be isolated.

Illustrative scenario: a compound week This scenario is illustrative. It shows how the lessons in this article could work together during a compound event. Monday.

Forecasts show a hot, windy week followed by heavy rain over a region with recent burn scars. The intelligence cell prepares an assessment covering both hazards, with most likely and most dangerous scenarios. Liaison officers from Police, Ambulance, SES and local councils join the morning briefing.

Tuesday. Several fires start. The incident controller issues clear intent: protect life, keep two evacuation routes open, and protect the regional hospital.

Collection management assigns aircraft to the fires threatening communities and a drone to monitor the evacuation routes. Wednesday. Communications fail across part of the fire area after a tower is damaged.

Sector commanders act on the intent they were given, moving crews to protect the evacuation route without waiting for instructions. Satellite communications on command vehicles restore contact within the hour. Thursday.

The readiness picture shows that several brigades are approaching fatigue limits. Interstate crews are requested early, through national arrangements, rather than when crews are exhausted. Friday.

Heavy rain begins. The intelligence cell's earlier assessment of debris flow risk on burn scars allows SES teams and swiftwater crews to be pre-positioned and residents to be warned. The following week.

An after-action review compares decisions with what the data showed at the time, and identifies three changes to procedures and one gap in communications coverage.

Cyber security at the core: assume the network is contested Cyber security at the core: secure by design, not bolted on. Source: Darren Covington Defence has a principle fire services should adopt: assume your networks are contested. Military command systems are designed on the expectation that adversaries will try to jam, intercept, spoof or disrupt them.

Plans include what happens when GPS is degraded, communications are lost or data has been tampered with. Emergency services face a different adversary, but the same logic applies. A ransomware attack on a computer-aided dispatch system during a catastrophic fire day, a spoofed warning, a manipulated data feed or a denial-of-service attack on a public information site could all cost lives.

Disruption doesn't have to be malicious either: the September 2025 outage that stopped Triple Zero calls connecting in parts of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory showed how much depends on networks working. What a Defence-style approach looks like for fire services: ■ Information assurance: command and intelligence data is authenticated and integrity-checked, so commanders know it hasn't been altered. ■ Degraded-mode operations: every critical capability (dispatch, warnings, crew tracking) has a tested fallback when networks or systems are lost, consistent with mission command.

■ Zero-trust architecture: users, devices and data feeds are continuously verified, with least-privilege access across agencies. ■ Red teaming for cyber: exercises deliberately include cyber attacks and IT outages, not just fire behaviour. ■ Essential Eight as the floor: the Australian Signals Directorate's Essential Eight mitigations are implemented as a baseline, with higher maturity for critical systems.

A cyber incident in the middle of a fire A useful tabletop exercise for any agency is to imagine a cyber incident during a major fire. For example: at 1400 on a Catastrophic day, the computer-aided dispatch system becomes unavailable because of ransomware. Questions to work through include: ■ How quickly would we know, and who would declare an incident?

■ How would we dispatch crews and track resources manually, and have we practised it? ■ Which other systems depend on dispatch, such as crew tracking, rostering and public information? ■ How would we communicate with crews, partner agencies and the public?

■ Who would we notify, including the Australian Signals Directorate and government? ■ How would we restore the system safely without reinfecting it? Agencies that work through scenarios like this before they happen are far better placed when one does.

Degraded-mode checklist Defence plans for degraded operations as a matter of routine. Fire services can borrow a simple checklist for each critical capability: ■ What is the manual or offline fallback, and is it documented where people can find it without the system? ■ Who is trained to use it, and when did they last practise?

■ How long can we operate in degraded mode before the risk becomes unacceptable? ■ What information do we need to keep offline, such as contact lists, maps and resource registers? ■ How will we recover and reconcile records once the system is restored?

A word of caution The civilian character of emergency services is not a weakness to be overcome. It is the source of their legitimacy. Communities welcome firefighters and SES volunteers into their homes and streets because they are neighbours, not soldiers.

Any adoption of Defence methods must protect that relationship. In practice, that means using plain language rather than military jargon, keeping decisions transparent and accountable to the community, and making sure intelligence about communities is used only to protect them. Emergency services must keep their civilian, community-centred character.

The goal isn't to militarise fire services or import military culture wholesale. It is to borrow the discipline of intelligence, decision-making, joint operations and assurance, while keeping the trust and community connection that make Australian emergency services unique. Putting it into practice: a staged roadmap First 90 days ■ Map the decision cycle for a recent major event and identify where time was lost.

■ Review how intelligence is organised in incident management teams, and where it is missing. ■ Run a tabletop exercise on losing dispatch or radio communications during a major fire.

First year ■ Establish dedicated intelligence roles at state level, with clear products and training. ■ Introduce structured after-action reviews connected to incident data. ■ Agree liaison arrangements and a joint exercise program with Defence.

■ Document degraded-mode procedures for every critical capability. Years two to three ■ Extend intelligence roles to regions and incident management teams. ■ Introduce collection management for aviation, drones and satellite tasking.

■ Implement readiness levels for crews, appliances and aircraft during high-risk periods. ■ Achieve higher Essential Eight maturity for command, dispatch and warning systems. Measuring success ■ Decision-cycle time: from a significant change in conditions to a change in deployment or warnings.

■ Intelligence coverage: the share of significant incidents supported by a dedicated intelligence function. ■ After-action follow-through: the share of review actions completed within an agreed time. ■ Degraded-mode readiness: the share of critical capabilities with a documented, exercised fallback.

■ Interoperability: the number of partner agencies sharing data in the common operating picture. Barriers and how to overcome them ■ "We're not the military." True, and the aim isn't to become military. Frame the lessons as disciplines that any high-consequence organisation can use.

■ Capacity during the season. Intelligence roles and exercises compete with operational demands. Build capability in the off-season and protect it during high-risk periods.

■ Data access. Analysts can only work with data they can reach. Agreements and integration with partner agencies take time and should start early.

■ Security clearances and information sharing. Working with Defence may involve classified information. Agree in advance what can be shared, how, and with whom.

■ Measuring value. Better intelligence is hard to measure. Use exercises and after-action reviews to show where it changed decisions and outcomes.

What leaders should do next ■ Establish intelligence as a core function with dedicated roles at state, regional and incident level. ■ Measure decision-cycle time on major incidents: how long from a change in conditions to a change in action? ■ Exercise degraded operations, including the loss of dispatch systems, radio networks and power.

■ Partner with Defence on doctrine, exercising, liaison officers and information assurance. ■ Make cyber resilience part of every exercise, not a separate IT activity. Questions for boards and executives ■ Do our incident management teams have dedicated intelligence capability, or is it an extra task for busy people?

■ How long does it take us to turn a change in conditions into a change in action, and where is the time lost? ■ Could our crews act sensibly if communications failed for several hours? ■ What would happen if our dispatch system was unavailable on a Catastrophic day?

■ How well do we know our Defence counterparts, and when did we last exercise together? Glossary ■ After-action review: a structured discussion after an event to understand what happened and what to change. ■ DACC: Defence Assistance to the Civil Community, the arrangements under which Defence supports civil authorities.

■ Intent: a statement of what needs to be achieved and why, used to guide decisions when plans change. ■ ISR: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. ■ Mission command: a style of command in which leaders give clear intent and trust teams to decide how to achieve it.

■ OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, a model of decision-making developed by John Boyd. ■ Red teaming: deliberately challenging a plan by taking the perspective of an adversary or a critic. Further reading ■ Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, Report (2020).

■ Australian Signals Directorate, Essential Eight Maturity Model. ■ AFAC, Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS). ■ Australian Government, Defence Assistance to the Civil Community policy.

What Defence practices have you seen work well in emergency management? #EmergencyManagement #FireServices #Defence #Intelligence #MissionCommand #CyberSecurity #DecisionMaking #Interoperability #AIIMS #Australia Darren Covington writes on intelligence-driven emergency services, climate resilience, technology and cyber security in Australia. Photo credits: Diego González / Unsplash; Darren Covington.

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