Lessons from Mining: Remote Operations, Fatigue and Critical Controls

■ Few industries operate in conditions closer to Australian emergency services than mining: remote, hazardous, 24/7, with large fleets and long rosters, often in bushfire-, cyclone-and flood-prone country. ■ Australian mining leads the world in remote operations centres, autonomous equipment, fatigue science and critical control management. All four translate directly to fire services.

■ The single most powerful idea: identify the few controls that stop fatalities, then verify they are working in real time, on every shift, for every crew. ■ Mining's hardest digital lesson is that connecting operational technology to networks creates cyber risk to physical safety. Fire services are about to face the same issue.

■ This edition adds an illustrative scenario, a staged implementation roadmap, measures of success, the main barriers to adoption, and questions for boards and executives. Few industries in the world operate in conditions closer to Australian emergency services than mining. Mines are remote, hazardous and spread across vast distances.

They run 24/7 with large fleets of heavy equipment and workforces on long rosters. Many mining regions are bushfire-, cyclone-and flood-prone, and mining companies run their own emergency response teams.

Australian mining is also a global leader in automation and remote operations. Over the past two decades the industry has moved from running each site as a separate operation to running whole regions as integrated systems, controlled from operations centres hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. That transformation was driven by the same pressures emergency services now face: distance, safety risk, scarce skilled people, expensive assets and the need to make better decisions faster.

That makes mining a valuable source of lessons for fire services. 1,500+ km between Rio Tinto's Perth operations centre and its Pilbara operations 2015 ICMM critical control management guidance first published 24/7 operations, like emergency services A giant haul truck in an open-cut mine. Autonomous fleets have operated in Australian mines for over a decade.

Source: Photo by omid roshan, Unsplash Why mining is the closest match Defence offers lessons about intelligence and command, and oil and gas about major-hazard safety. Mining is different because its day-to-day operating conditions look so much like those of a rural or regional fire service. ■ Geography.

Large Australian mines sit in some of the most remote country on the continent. Like a rural brigade, a mine site may be hours from the nearest hospital, with patchy communications and long supply lines. ■ Hazards.

Mines manage heavy vehicles, fire, explosives, heat, dust, flooding and structural collapse. Many have their own fire appliances and trained emergency response teams. ■ People.

Mining relies on fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out workforces on long rosters. Fatigue, travel time and family pressures are constant concerns, much as they are for volunteers who serve after their normal working day. ■ Assets.

Mining fleets are large, expensive and critical. An unavailable truck or drill costs production; an unavailable appliance or aircraft costs response capability. ■ Scrutiny.

Mining is heavily regulated, and fatalities lead to investigations, prosecutions and public attention.

The comparison isn't perfect. Mines plan their work months in advance, while emergencies arrive without notice, and mines are run for profit, while fire services exist for the community. But the operating problems the two sectors solve each day are strikingly similar, and mining has had the investment to solve many of them first.

Where the two sectors differ, and why it matters The differences shape how mining's lessons should be adapted, not whether they apply: ■ Predictability. A mine knows where its trucks will be tomorrow. A fire service doesn't know where the next fire will start.

Systems borrowed from mining must cope with sudden surges, unfamiliar locations and crews who have never worked together. ■ Workforce. Mining employs paid, full-time staff under one employer.

Fire services rely on a mix of career staff and volunteers, often across several agencies. Anything that adds administrative burden to volunteers will fail. ■ Control of the environment.

A mine can close a road, stop a process or evacuate a pit on its own authority. A fire service operates in public spaces, among communities, with many other organisations involved. ■ Funding.

Mining investment is justified by productivity. Emergency services investment is justified by public safety and resilience, which are harder to measure and often funded through annual budgets. These differences point to a clear design principle: borrow the discipline and the technology, but build them around surge, volunteers, partnership and public accountability.

Lesson 1: Remote operations centres Major miners run integrated remote operations centres, some located more than 1,500 kilometres from the mines they control. From Perth, operators manage mines, autonomous trucks, rail networks and ports across the Pilbara as one integrated system. Rio Tinto describes its AutoHaul network as the world's first autonomous heavy-haul, long-distance rail operation.

These centres bring planning, operations, maintenance, logistics and safety into one room, all looking at the same real-time data. Decisions that once took days of phone calls between sites now happen in minutes, because everyone can see the whole system. How a mining operations centre works The power of the model comes less from the screens than from the way work is organised around them: ■ Integrated planning.

Mine plans, rail schedules, port loading and maintenance windows are planned together, so a change in one part of the chain is immediately visible in the others. ■ Exception-based control. Operators don't watch every truck.

Systems flag deviations, such as a stalled vehicle, a missed maintenance window or a safety alarm, and people focus on what needs a decision. ■ Remote expertise. Specialists who once had to fly to site can diagnose equipment problems, review safety incidents and support local supervisors from the centre.

■ One source of truth. Everyone works from the same data, so there is less argument about what is happening and more focus on what to do about it. ■ Local authority stays local.

Site supervisors still run their sites. The centre coordinates and supports; it doesn't micro-manage.

What it would look like in a fire service For fire services: state operations centres can evolve along the same lines. Fire, Police, Ambulance, SES, the Bureau of Meteorology, utilities and transport would work from one integrated, real-time picture of hazards, resources and community impacts, rather than co-locating people who still look at separate systems. What a fire-service operations centre could borrow: ■ One integrated picture of hazards, crews, appliances, aircraft, roads and power.

■ Specialists available remotely, such as fire behaviour analysts, hydrologists and structural engineers, supporting any incident in the state. ■ Exception-based monitoring that flags what has changed and what needs attention, rather than asking people to watch everything. ■ Planning and operations together, so pre-positioning, rostering, maintenance and aviation availability are planned as one system before a high-risk period, not managed separately during it.

■ Clear lines of authority, consistent with AIIMS, so the centre supports incident controllers rather than second-guessing them. Designing the roles, not just the room Mining's operations centres succeeded because they created new roles and new ways of working, not because they put people in the same building. A fire-service equivalent would need to define who does what before, during and after an event: ■ Duty operations lead: maintains the statewide picture, coordinates resources across incidents and escalates issues to the State Controller.

■ Intelligence analysts: fuse weather, satellite, sensor and field information into assessments and forecasts for incident teams. ■ Resource and readiness coordinator: tracks appliances, aircraft, crews, qualifications and fatigue, and recommends pre-positioning. ■ Partner agency liaison: connects Police, Ambulance, SES, utilities and transport, so their decisions are visible and coordinated.

■ Specialist advisers on call: fire behaviour, hydrology, structural engineering, hazardous materials and public health, available to any incident remotely. ■ Security and systems lead: monitors the health and security of the systems the centre depends on, and leads the response if they fail. Each role needs clear authority, training and a place in AIIMS, so the operations centre strengthens the incident management structure rather than competing with it.

Watch-outs Operations centres can fail in predictable ways. They can become expensive rooms full of screens that duplicate existing systems. They can encourage central staff to micro-manage the field.

And they can become single points of failure. The mining experience suggests three safeguards: design the centre around decisions rather than displays, protect local authority, and build a tested fallback for when the centre itself is unavailable.

data. Operations centres bring planning, operations, maintenance and safety into one room around the same Source: Photo by Miha Meglic, Unsplash Lesson 2: Autonomous and remotely operated equipment Autonomous haul trucks, drills and trains have operated in Australian mines for over a decade, removing people from hazardous areas and improving consistency and safety. Several of the largest miners in the Pilbara now run autonomous haulage fleets as standard practice.

What mining learned along the way The path to autonomy at scale was not simple, and the lessons are as much about people and process as technology: ■ Start in controlled environments. Autonomy was proven in defined areas with clear rules before it was expanded. ■ Redesign the work, not just the machine.

Traffic rules, maintenance practices, site access and emergency procedures all had to change. ■ Bring the workforce with you. Operators moved into new roles in control rooms, maintenance and data.

Where that transition was managed well, adoption was faster. ■ Plan for failure. Autonomous systems need clear, tested behaviour when sensors, communications or software fail.

What it would look like in a fire service For fire services: this shows autonomy can work at scale in harsh Australian conditions. Remotely operated or autonomous appliances, earthmoving equipment for containment lines, and drones for reconnaissance and hazard assessment could take people out of the most dangerous situations, including active fire edges, unstable structures, flood debris and hazardous materials. The best early candidates are tasks where the environment is hazardous but the job is well defined: ■ Remote-controlled earthmoving for containment lines in steep or unsafe terrain.

■ Robotic entry into hazardous structures, tunnels and industrial sites. ■ Drone reconnaissance of fire edges, flood levels and damaged infrastructure. ■ Remote monitoring of burnt-out areas for re-ignition overnight.

Article 5 explores autonomy and human–machine teaming in depth. Lesson 3: Fatigue management as a science Mining has invested heavily in fatigue science: roster design, fatigue risk management systems, and in-cab camera systems that detect microsleeps and distraction. Canberra-based Seeing Machines is one example; its eye-tracking fatigue detection has been used in mining fleets for more than a decade.

Night operations on a fire in New South Wales. Long shifts, darkness and long drives home are where fatigue risk peaks. Source: Photo by Darren Covington From hours limits to fatigue risk management Mining's approach has matured from simple hours-of-work limits to a broader fatigue risk management system: ■ Roster design that considers the number of consecutive shifts, the direction of rotation, start times and recovery days.

■ Travel time counted as part of the fatigue load, not just time on shift. ■ Objective measures, such as in-cab detection of microsleeps and eye closure, alongside self-reporting. ■ Supervisor training to recognise fatigue and act on it without stigma.

■ Data analysis of incidents and near misses to understand when and where fatigue risk peaks. What it would look like in a fire service For fire services: fatigue is one of the biggest hidden risks in long campaign fires and back-to-back events, especially for volunteers who come to a shift after their normal day job. Lessons to adopt include: ■ Fatigue-aware rostering and deployment systems that track hours across agencies and deployments.

■ In-cab fatigue detection on appliances and support vehicles, especially for long-distance driving to and from deployments. ■ Objective fatigue risk measures rather than relying on self-reporting alone. ■ Clear, enforced work-rest limits for campaign events and interstate deployments.

■ Recognition that a volunteer's fatigue starts with their working day, not with the pager. Fatigue data is sensitive personal information. Any system that collects it must be designed with the workforce, used to protect people rather than to discipline them, and governed under strong privacy controls.

Mining's experience is that adoption depends on trust: workers accept fatigue technology when they see it used to keep them safe. “Fatigue is the hazard nobody sees on the fireground, until it is too late.” Lesson 4: Critical control management Mining's critical control management approach, first set out by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) in 2015 and updated since, focuses on identifying the small number of controls that prevent fatalities, then verifying that those controls are in place and working, every shift. Critical controls, verified in real time, on every shift, for every crew.

Source: Darren Covington How critical control management works The method follows a clear sequence: 1 Identify the material unwanted events, the scenarios that could kill people, such as a vehicle collision, a fall from height or an uncontrolled fire.

2 Map the controls that prevent each event or reduce its consequences, often using bow-tie analysis. 3 Select the critical controls, the few that matter most. A control is critical if its absence or failure would significantly increase the risk.

4 Define performance requirements for each critical control: what "working" looks like, and how it will be checked. 5 Assign an owner who is accountable for each control. 6 Verify regularly in the field, and report the results.

7 Act on failures immediately, and learn from them. What it would look like in a fire service For fire services: identify the critical controls that prevent firefighter and volunteer deaths, such as escape routes, safety zones, lookouts, communications, crew tracking, fatigue limits and contamination controls. Then use technology to verify them in real time: is the crew's escape route still open?

Is communication still active? Has the crew exceeded safe working hours? Many Australian agencies already teach crews principles such as LACES (lookouts, awareness, communications, escape routes and safety zones).

Critical control management builds on that foundation by making the controls explicit, owned and verified, rather than relying on each crew leader to check everything under pressure. A worked example: burnover This example is illustrative and simplified, to show the method rather than to prescribe controls for any agency. The material unwanted event: a crew is overrun by fire.

Threats that could lead to it: a sudden wind change, a spot fire behind the crew, a crew working beyond its sight lines, poor communications, or fatigue degrading judgement. Preventive controls might include accurate fire behaviour forecasts, lookouts, communications coverage, briefed and confirmed escape routes, fatigue limits and crew tracking. Recovery controls might include safety zones, vehicle protection systems, personal protective equipment, burnover drills and rapid medical response.

Selecting the critical controls. Not all of these are equal. An agency might decide that the critical controls for burnover are: 1 A briefed, confirmed and continuously checked escape route and safety zone.

2 Active two-way communications between the crew and its supervisor. 3 A crew working within its fatigue limits. 4 Current fire behaviour information reaching the crew.

Verifying them. For each, the agency defines what "working" means and how it is checked. Crew tracking and fire spread prediction can confirm whether an escape route remains viable.

Network monitoring can confirm communications. Rostering data can confirm fatigue limits. Crew leaders confirm what technology can't see.

Acting on failure. If any critical control fails, the crew and its supervisor are alerted at once, and the crew moves to safety before work continues. The event is then reviewed to understand why the control failed.

The discipline matters more than the technology:

■ Few, not many. Focus on the handful of controls that actually prevent fatalities. ■ Verified, not assumed.

Each control has an owner and a way to confirm it is working. ■ Escalated, not filed. A failing control triggers immediate action, not a report.

Lesson 5: Proximity detection and collision avoidance Mines use proximity detection and collision avoidance systems to protect workers around heavy machinery. Vehicles and people carry tags or sensors, and the system warns operators, or in some cases slows or stops a vehicle, when a collision risk is detected. For fire services: firegrounds and flood zones bring together heavy appliances, aircraft, earthmoving equipment, civilians and crews in smoke and darkness.

Similar systems could reduce vehicle and equipment-related injuries and support safe drone and aircraft operations. The same location data that warns of a collision can also feed crew tracking and the common operating picture, so one investment supports several safety outcomes. Lesson 6: Predictive maintenance and asset availability Mining fleets use sensors and analytics to predict equipment failure and schedule maintenance before breakdowns, maximising availability when production depends on it.

For fire services: applying predictive maintenance across fire appliances, pumps, breathing apparatus and aircraft, particularly across dispersed volunteer brigades, would increase readiness when it matters most and make better use of limited capital budgets. What it would take: ■ Telematics on appliances that report engine, pump and system health automatically. ■ Maintenance planning tied to the season, so major servicing is completed before the high-risk period rather than during it.

■ Readiness reporting that shows what is actually available, by region and capability, in real time. ■ Support for volunteer brigades, which often rely on a few members to manage equipment checks alongside their other roles. Lesson 7: Partnership on the ground Mining companies in regional Australia often have significant emergency response capability: trained teams, heavy equipment, aviation and communications.

Formalising partnerships, shared training and data sharing with local fire and SES units could strengthen regional resilience, especially in remote areas where resources are thin. Practical forms of partnership include: ■ Mutual aid agreements that set out what each party can provide, and how to request it. ■ Joint exercises, so crews from both sides know each other, their equipment and their procedures before an emergency.

■ Shared situational awareness, such as mine-site weather stations, cameras and drones feeding into the agency's common operating picture.

■ Heavy plant registers, so incident controllers know which earthmoving equipment and operators are available locally. What fire services can learn from mine emergency response teams Mine emergency response teams operate in a demanding niche: they respond to fires, vehicle accidents, confined spaces, hazardous chemicals and medical emergencies, often far from outside help. Several features of how they work are worth studying: ■ Competency-based training with regular, realistic scenarios, often assessed against defined standards.

■ Pre-incident planning for every high-risk area of the site, with maps, access points, hazards and isolation points documented in advance. ■ Integration with site operations, so the response team can isolate power, stop equipment and access site data quickly. ■ Strong medical capability, because the nearest hospital may be hours away.

■ Competitions and benchmarking between sites and companies, which keep skills sharp and spread good practice. Rural fire brigades and SES units in mining regions could gain from joint training with these teams, and the teams themselves gain from the broader incident experience of emergency services. Data: the thread that connects the lessons Every lesson in this article depends on data.

Operations centres need a live picture. Critical control verification needs location, communications and roster data. Fatigue management needs hours and travel data.

Predictive maintenance needs telematics. Mining's experience is that the data foundations take longer to build than the visible technology, and matter more. What fire services need in place: ■ Common identifiers for people, appliances, stations and incidents, used across every system.

■ Integration between core systems, such as computer-aided dispatch, rostering, membership, fleet and incident management, so information is entered once and used many times. ■ Data quality ownership, with named people responsible for keeping key data accurate, including volunteer qualifications and availability. ■ Clear data-sharing agreements with partner agencies and industry, setting out what is shared, for what purpose and under what security controls.

■ Privacy by design, so personal information about crews and communities is collected only where necessary, protected and kept only as long as needed. Without these foundations, an operations centre becomes a room of disconnected screens and critical control verification becomes another manual checklist. With them, the lessons from mining can be applied quickly and at scale.

A fleet of haul trucks. Heavy equipment and trained mine-site teams are regional emergency assets. Source: Photo by omid roshan, Unsplash Bringing the workforce with you Mining's automation story has an important human side.

The companies that adopted remote operations and autonomy most successfully treated it as a workforce transformation, not just a technology project. The same will be true for fire services, with the added complexity of a large volunteer workforce. Lessons from mining's experience: ■ Explain the why.

People accept change when they understand the safety reasons behind it. Fatigue detection framed as surveillance will be resisted; framed as protection, it is more likely to be welcomed. ■ Involve the frontline in design.

Operators who helped design control room screens and procedures became their strongest advocates. Fire services should involve crew leaders, volunteers and unions from the first workshop. ■ Create pathways, not redundancies.

New roles in operations centres, data analysis, drone operations and maintenance can be offered to existing staff and volunteers, with training to match. ■ Respect local knowledge. Remote centres work best when they draw on the experience of people who know the country, the community and the equipment.

■ Be honest about trade-offs. Any change to rostering, deployment or monitoring affects people's lives. Leaders should discuss the trade-offs openly and adjust when something doesn't work.

For volunteers, two principles matter most. First, new systems must save time, not consume it: a volunteer brigade captain should spend less time on paperwork, not more. Second, volunteers must see the benefit for themselves and their communities, such as fewer unnecessary call-outs, safer deployments and better support after difficult events.

Illustrative scenario: a regional fire day The following scenario is illustrative. It shows how the lessons above could work together.

06:00. The integrated operations centre reviews the day. The fire danger rating for the region is Extreme.

The readiness dashboard shows two tankers out of service for maintenance, and the predictive maintenance system flags a third with a pump fault likely within days. A nearby mine site's weather station shows wind speeds rising earlier than forecast. 09:30.

Fatigue data shows that one brigade's crews completed a long overnight deployment. The rostering system recommends a neighbouring brigade for first response in that sector, and the duty officer agrees. 13:15.

A fire starts in steep country near the mine. The mine's emergency response team and the local brigade respond together under a mutual aid agreement. The mine provides an operator and dozer for a containment line, and a drone streams imagery to both teams and the operations centre.

14:00. Critical control monitoring shows that a crew's planned escape route will be cut if the fire crosses a ridge within the next hour. The crew leader is alerted, agrees a new escape route and safety zone, and the change is recorded.

16:40. A crew member's in-cab fatigue alert triggers on the drive back to the station. The driver is changed, and the event is logged for review without blame.

Next day. The after-action review uses the data from the operations centre to identify what worked, what didn't, and which controls were most stretched. Cyber security at the core: protecting operational technology Cyber security at the core: secure by design, not bolted on.

Source: Darren Covington Mining learned a hard lesson as it automated: once operational technology (the systems that control physical equipment such as trucks, conveyors and processing plants) is connected to corporate networks and the internet, a cyber incident can become a safety incident. A compromised control system doesn't just leak data. It can move machinery.

Fire services are on the same path. Remote operations centres, connected appliances, telematics, crew tracking, drones and sensor networks all blur the line between IT and the physical world. The lessons from mining are directly transferable: ■ Separate and segment.

Operational systems (dispatch, crew tracking, appliance telematics) are segmented from corporate IT, with tightly controlled connections between them. ■ Treat cyber controls as critical controls. Apply the same "few, verified, escalated" discipline to cyber: multi-factor authentication, patching, backups and access control are verified, not assumed.

■ Secure the supply chain. Vendors, telematics providers and cloud services are assessed and contractually bound to security standards, because attackers often enter through third parties. ■ Monitor 24/7.

The operations centre that watches the fireground should be matched by security monitoring that watches the network. ■ Plan for the bad day. Rehearse what happens if the operations centre itself is unavailable, whether from a cyber attack, a power failure or the fire.

Threat scenarios fire services should plan for ■ Ransomware on dispatch or rostering systems during a high-risk period, forcing manual operations. ■ A compromised vendor account used to reach telematics or crew-tracking platforms. ■ Tampering with sensor data, such as weather stations or cameras, that feeds the common operating picture.

■ Loss of the operations centre through a cyber attack, power failure or the fire itself. Mapping the controls Industrial operators commonly use the international ISA/IEC 62443 series of standards to secure operational technology, alongside general IT controls. For Australian fire services, a practical approach combines three layers: 1 The Essential Eight as the baseline for corporate IT and operational systems, including multi-factor authentication, patching, restricted administrative privileges and regular, tested backups.

2 Operational technology controls for connected appliances, sensors and control systems, including network segmentation, secure remote access and asset inventories. 3 Critical control discipline applied to the handful of cyber controls that protect safety-critical systems, each with an owner, a performance standard and regular verification. Governance and accountability Mining companies learned that operational technology security falls between the cracks if it isn't clearly owned.

IT teams understand networks but not machinery; operations teams understand machinery but not networks. The fix was to make ownership explicit. Fire services should do the same: ■ Name an executive owner for the security of operational and safety-critical systems, not just corporate IT.

■ Keep an inventory of every connected system that affects response or crew safety, including those run by vendors. ■ Report cyber risk with operational risk, using the same language of consequences, controls and verification. ■ Exercise together.

Cyber incident response should be rehearsed with operations staff, not just the IT team, and ideally during a simulated fire or flood.

Australia's Security of Critical Infrastructure framework and the Australian Signals Directorate's Essential Eight provide a practical baseline. The aim is simple: the systems that keep crews safe must themselves be safe. Putting it into practice: a staged roadmap First 90 days ■ Map the operational systems that support crew safety and response, including who owns them and how they connect.

■ Identify the material unwanted events for firefighters and volunteers, and draft the critical controls for each. ■ Review fatigue rules for campaign events and long-distance travel. First year ■ Pilot critical control verification with a small number of brigades or stations.

■ Trial in-cab fatigue detection on vehicles used for long-distance deployment. ■ Formalise mutual aid with one or two regional mine sites, including a joint exercise. ■ Segment operational systems from corporate IT and close the highest-risk Essential Eight gaps.

Years two to three ■ Establish an integrated operations centre for a region or hazard season. ■ Roll out telematics and predictive maintenance across priority fleets. ■ Extend critical control verification statewide, with results reported to the executive.

■ Introduce 24/7 security monitoring for safety-critical systems. Making the case for investment Mining invested in remote operations, autonomy and fatigue technology because the business case was clear: safer operations, higher equipment availability and better decisions. Fire services need to make a similar case, framed around public value rather than profit.

A strong investment case would set out: ■ The safety case. How many serious incidents involving fatigue, vehicles, burnover or equipment failure have occurred, and which of the proposed controls would have reduced them. ■ The readiness case.

How much additional capability becomes available on high-risk days through better maintenance planning and readiness reporting, compared with buying more appliances. ■ The decision case. How much faster resources can be pre-positioned and redeployed when everyone works from one integrated picture.

■ The partnership case. What local industry capability, such as heavy plant, trained teams and sensors, becomes available through formal agreements at little cost. ■ The resilience case.

What it would cost the community if dispatch, warnings or crew tracking failed during a major event, and how the cyber and fallback investments reduce that risk.

Pilots are the best evidence. A well-designed pilot in one region, with clear measures and an honest evaluation, will do more to secure funding than any strategy document. Measuring success Mining measures what matters.

Fire services adopting these lessons could track: ■ Critical control verification rate: the share of planned control checks completed, and the share that found a failing control. ■ Fatigue exceedances: how often work-rest limits are exceeded, and how quickly they are corrected. ■ Fleet availability: the share of appliances and aircraft available during high-risk periods.

■ Time to decision: how long it takes from a significant change in conditions to a change in deployment. ■ Cyber baseline: Essential Eight maturity for safety-critical systems, and the time to restore them in exercises. Barriers and how to overcome them ■ "We're not a mine." True, but the operating problems are similar.

Start with lessons that clearly fit, such as fatigue and critical controls, and build credibility. ■ Volunteer workload. New systems must reduce paperwork, not add to it.

Design with volunteers from the start. ■ Funding. Operations centres and telematics cost money.

Begin with pilots that show measurable safety and availability benefits. ■ Privacy concerns. Fatigue and location data must be governed transparently, with clear limits on how they are used.

■ Legacy systems. Many agencies run older platforms. Integration and segmentation work should be planned alongside any upgrade.

Questions for boards and executives ■ Do we know the handful of controls that prevent firefighter and volunteer fatalities, and do we verify them? ■ How do we know our crews are not dangerously fatigued, particularly volunteers and those driving long distances? ■ What share of our fleet is actually available on a high-risk day, and how do we know?

■ Which of our operational systems could affect crew safety if compromised, and are they separated from corporate IT? ■ Which local industry partners could help in an emergency, and have we exercised with them?

What leaders should do next ■ Pilot an integrated operations centre for one region or hazard season, with Police, Ambulance and SES in the same picture. ■ Define your critical controls for firefighter and volunteer fatalities, and how each will be verified. ■ Introduce fatigue science into rostering and deployment, starting with long-distance driving.

■ Map your operational technology and segment it from corporate IT. ■ Partner with local mine sites on joint training, equipment sharing and data exchange. Glossary ■ Autonomous haulage: heavy trucks that drive themselves on a mine site under the supervision of a control system and operators.

■ Bow-tie analysis: a diagram linking the threats that could cause a serious event to its consequences, showing the controls on each side. ■ Critical control: a control that is crucial to preventing a fatal event or reducing its consequences. ■ Exception-based monitoring: systems that alert people to changes and deviations, rather than requiring them to watch everything.

■ Fatigue risk management system: an approach that manages fatigue through roster design, monitoring, training and data, rather than hours limits alone. ■ Operational technology (OT): hardware and software that monitor or control physical equipment, such as vehicles, pumps and sensors. ■ Remote operations centre: a central facility from which operations across many sites are planned, monitored and supported.

Further reading ■ International Council on Mining and Metals, Health and Safety Critical Control Management: Good Practice Guide (2015). ■ Australian Signals Directorate, Essential Eight Maturity Model. ■ Australian Government, Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018.

■ ISA/IEC 62443 series of standards for industrial automation and control systems security. ■ AFAC, Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS). Where else could mining's remote operations model help emergency services?

#EmergencyManagement #FireServices #Mining #RemoteOperations #FatigueManagement #CriticalControls #CyberSecurity #OTSecurity #Automation #Safety #Australia Darren Covington writes on intelligence-driven emergency services, climate resilience, technology and cyber security in Australia. Photo credits: omid roshan / Unsplash; Miha Meglic / Unsplash; Darren Covington. Unsplash photos are used under the Unsplash Licence.

Other photos and graphics © Darren Covington.