Strengthening resilience through connectivity

Today’s guest is Nicole Blackwell, an experienced emergency management leader working at NBN Co, helping strengthen preparedness, response and resilience across complex systems and critical infrastructure.

With deep expertise in emergency management, stakeholder collaboration and cross-sector coordination, Nicole sits at the intersection of technology, connectivity, and community resilience - working to ensure critical services and partnerships are ready when disruption strikes.

She also contributes to the broader emergency management community through her involvement with organisations such as Red Cross and Safe Australasia.

Subscribe now and join us as we explore smarter, stronger, and more connected ways to prepare for the future. 

Transcript

Renae Hanvin:

Hello and welcome to Doing Disasters Differently: The Podcast with Renae Hanvin, which is all about inspiring you to start thinking and doing disasters a little bit differently too. Hello and welcome to today's episode and we're talking about strengthening resilience through connectivity and I'm so excited who my guest is. I've got Nicole Blackwell, who's an experienced emergency management leader working at NBN Co. She's helping strengthen preparedness, response, and resilience across complex systems and critical infrastructure. She's got deep expertise in emergency management, stakeholder collaboration, woo-hoo, and cros-sector coordination. Nicole sits at the intersection of technology, connectivity, and community resilience, working to ensure critical services and partnerships are ready when disruptions strike. Now, she also contributes to the broader emergency management community through her involvement with organizations such as Red Cross and Safe Australasia. Now, Safe Australasia, please check out. We'll pop our link in there as well because it's a little membership, but they're doing some really amazing work.

Now, where did we meet? You know what? I had to dive, Nicole, into my LinkedIn to remind myself where we met and it was actually back in 2019 during my corporate to community days when our paths crossed while trying to coordinate some cross-sector initiatives. Now, that idea in particular didn't quite get off the ground. It was a bit too progressive for the time, dare I say, that I was trying to get happening. But one thing that stood out was Nicole's enthusiasm for collaboration and genuine interest in connecting sectors to do preparedness and resilience differently. I'm so excited to be chatting with you today, Nicole.

Nicole Blackwell:

Thank you so much, Renae. Thank you for having me.

Renae Hanvin:

Oh, you're very, very welcome. Now, you sit in a really interesting space in the emergency management and critical infrastructure and connectivity sector. And I love talking to people who think differently and do differently too. So can you share what does your role involve and why should people care about emergency management inside an organization like NBN?

Nicole Blackwell:

Yeah, I really sit in a space between emergency management communications in the technical sense and then community connectivity. So my role at MBN really means that I try and make sure MBN is showing up in the right ways for community before, during and after events. And when I say that, it's not about that we're responding like an emergency service, it's completely different aspect of it. So it's really making sure that people have clear trusted information at their fingertips about their connectivity, what's happening, what to expect, and then what they themselves can do, whether that be as a resident, a business, a small business owner, or working in a major enterprise, whatever part of that community that they sit in or parts as we all do. But really, I think why should people care? People should care because connectivity is really how we live our lives these days.

It's how we access information. It's how we speak to family and friends. It's how we do our work. It's how we pay our bills, all those sort of things. So when something goes wrong, it can feel really stressful and confusing because it's not life as we know it anymore. So yeah, my role at NBN is really trying to coordinate and share that information about what people can do to be prepared for any sort of emergency event, to make it easier to get through that event. I mean, it's not going to solve all the issues, but get through that event and then recover on the other end and come out stronger.

Renae Hanvin:

But what I love what you've said there is that you're preparing us, do you know what I mean? Which totally aligns into the notion back, and I talk about it all the time, the 2011 national resilience strategy around shared responsibility, because we all have a responsibility to play. And as you alluded to, we're more reliant and our lives are more intertwined. So we need to know when it comes to businesses or communities or organizations, we need to know much more about it. And I think connectivity has become really, it's an essential infrastructure. So if you're talking about what's really essential. So from the warnings coming out, as you said, how we do our banking, mindfulness apps, how we tap into all mental wellbeing, business operations, taking payments, et cetera, and staying connected to loved ones, which is so important this day. I mean, I do a lot of family catch-ups with family members who live outside of town through online as well.

So how has the role of telecommunications changed in disaster preparedness and response over the years?

Nicole Blackwell:

It's changed a lot as you've just highlighted there. So it used to be a more of a nice to have part of our day. You get on, you check some emails or you text somebody or just get an overall understanding of what's going on and then move on with your life.

But now communication feels critical to everything. And as you mentioned, it's warnings, it's health, it's banking and that most important bit, particularly in emergencies, is that staying connected with family and friends. That's where it really gets me and that's why I'm so passionate about this space.

Knowing all of that, the biggest thing around telecommunications and disasters is the expectations have increased and that's a real challenge. People expect services just to work and always work even in extreme conditions and in Australia we have extreme conditions. So the reality is just like our power infrastructure, telecommunications can be impacted by disasters. When you get fires coming through, you get flooding coming through. That sort of immense threat really can do a lot of damage to both power and communications networks. So the shift that I'm really seeing is it more than just keeping the networks running. It really is about helping people understand how those networks behave during emergencies and you need to do that before an emergency strikes so that then they can understand what they can realistically expect and then plan for that. So prepare for how they're going to stay connected for their particular

Renae Hanvin:

Circumstance. Because the reality is, I mean, critical infrastructure is going to be impacted. There's no critical infrastructure that I've ever met or heard of that's going to survive any type of disruption or impact. So I think it's really, again, enabling the likes of me and small business owners and just general community members to understand that. It's like the power is probably going to go out. The connectivity might go out. So you've got to be prepared for that because that's just the reality of the times that we're living in at the moment. And I think the more in denial or that, "Oh, she'll be right, mate," kind of attitude that we have, I think we really need to flip that a little bit to go, "Well, yeah, you'll be right, but you're going to be disrupted. So maybe think about what you could do there." Now, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that people or organizations or communities have about staying connected during disasters?

And you talk about what are you educating or what do people need to know or think about now?

Nicole Blackwell:

Yeah. I think one of the biggest things is that expectation that the internet and communication should just be working no matter what. That isn't a reality because we do rely on that physical infrastructure. So that equipment itself, not just on the NBN network but in the user's premise, so at the businesses or at the home, that needs power as well. And if any of those or a combination of those or any combination of those are impacted by fire, floods, storms, bike loans, whatever it is that we seem to receive in this country, services can be disrupted. Another, I suppose, misconception is that restoration is always going to be quick and predictable, the predictable bit. I tend loads of different sessions where people say, "Well, how long is it going to take?" And it really is, how long is a piece of string? It depends so much on what the situation is at the time and in emergency conditions, access and safety and power restoration, they all play a big role.

So what should people be thinking about? So there's a couple of questions really. It's how they'll stay informed if power or connectivity is disrupted. And think about that before you know, okay, power's gone out, calms are down, this is what I'm going to do. It's like having a fire plan or a flood plan. This is your comms plan. What backup options do you have? So if plan A doesn't work, where's my plan B, D, and I'm very much a planner. I'll have A through Z and then maybe start again to AA and double Z. Me too. But then also just understand what the telcos like other utilities. We are working to restore services as quickly and as safely as possible. I know that firsthand because we've been involved in so many of those events around the country and we are genuinely working hard for communities to try and restore things and sort of return that normality out of the chaos from whatever the event has given us.

Renae Hanvin:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, we've dealt and supported mainly business communities, but obviously business people are in those communities, but doing a lot of work in far North Queensland at the moment. And again, our approach is that nudge theory, little steps, micro learning and loss of power and loss of connectivity with the likes of how do you take payments, et cetera. So there are backup options that you can do. And again, you alluded to the fact that it's not just about the connectivity, but it is also about the power, et cetera, et cetera. So if the power goes out, it's not the connectivity's fault that you can't take payments, et cetera. So you need a backup generator or same thing, a dongle or whatever it is. So there's a lot of backup things that people can organize because if it's like an essential service and you need your business to keep running, but you can't because there's an impact, think about the backups.

And we always talk about the fact that if it's impacting you, it's probably impacting most of our big chunk of your community. So do it together, make those connections together. And then if you are cut off, you've got the people next door, the businesses next door, et cetera, who are there to help you and you can collaborate together, which goes on quite nicely to my next question. So from your perspective, I guess what does good preparedness look like for organizations and we'll call them small businesses in particular for when they're looking to kep their business trading. So there's a lot of focus on you need a plan. Don't get me wrong, I love a plan as long as it's not more than about one page, you need your systems. Well, absolutely. I get really surprised by how many people from not - for-profits or community service organizations, because they're also really critical when disruptions occur and they are not a business as they tell me, but they do operate like a business.

So how are they getting their systems running? Or is it people or is it both? Where does it sort of work between the systems, the plans, and the people, just in your mind and experience?

Nicole Blackwell:

Good preparedness. It's one of my favourite topics. I'm so glad you asked that question. It's exactly what you just explained then. You need strong plans and partnerships, but more than that, you need to have tested those plans and those partnerships. So you don't just write it up and have it pretty glossy brochure or something sitting on your bench. That's great too. You have to test it because guaranteed things... Plan A is great, but it probably won't work all of the time. You need to have those plan B, plan C, plan D. It's like a choose your own adventure type storybook that I used to love when I was a kid. So you've got to really test those. And from my perspective, I think the difference in an emergency really comes down to one, trusting those plans that you have and also your relationships with governments and emergency services and your local community exactly as you just called out.

So it's building that trust before the event, having clear roles and decision making. So I know who to pick up the phone and call or I know who to, and this is beforehand, I know who to make those plans with before so that if the comms and power goes out, then I've got that plan and I can follow and execute on that. And it's also the testing bit also tests how people work together under pressure. If you can have a realistic scenario test, then you can start seeing where people's strengths are and if you need to take a bit of a breath every now and again, you can absolutely do so. But that testing is so critical because when you come to do it in real life, it's not going to become in any way, shape or form. So you need to have that confidence in what you're doing and the confidence in that you have options.

I think that helps. So those plans themselves give you a starting point, but yeah, it's really those people, those relationships and the culture that makes it work when things don't go to plan. So at MBM, we often talk about practicalities. So literally good preparation comes down to, and we've got these four tips, like keeping an emergency kit. So fully charged, mobile phone, battery powered, radio, portable battery pack. These aren't expensive. These are things we probably already have considering alternate communications and power solutions and testing them regularly. So again, that's your small business or your community organizations, your local GP, for example, your local chemist. They're really critical in an emergency for communities, backing up any critical information so you can access them remotely. So that's all your documentation. Even such things as a driver's license, have something backed up somewhere in case that they're damaged or you can't get to them.

But then follow those emergency services announcements on local radio, social media platforms. We will often put out communications messaging on social media, but we also have all the information up on our webpage as well when there are outages. So it just gives people an understanding and transparency around what's happening. So

Renae Hanvin:

Yes, so

Nicole Blackwell:

Good prep.

Renae Hanvin:

And I love because plans don't always go to plan as you kind of alluded to and we say that a lot as well as much as we... And in fact, it's quite funny because delivering some sessions recently and I was like, put your plan on the back of the toilet door or something like that is prime real estate or where people can see. So don't create a plan and just let it get digital dust or just sit somewhere in a drawer, put it out so people can see it. And we actually have something coming in the next couple of months. I love a what if Wednesday. So I drive my team and anyone who'll talk to me on a Wednesday, you're lucky we're filming this on a Thursday, literally with what ifs. And even my kids at home, I drive them nuts, I think. It's like, "What if this?

What if that? What if that? " Because again, if you get that thought of the potential impacts or consequences and it doesn't have to be boring I have really fun, funny what if conversations with anyone who will have one with me that have lots of laughs about it because you can make it interesting and fun. But the underlying component is that you're talking about, "Oh, what if something happens, what am I going to do? " And I love doing it with my mom. She's 80. I love chatting to her. "If this happens, mom, and yes, it's good conversations. Now we know disasters are becoming more frequent. They're becoming complex and they're becoming interconnected. So what are some of the emerging risks or challenges that are keeping emergency managers? So irrespective of where you're working awake at night

Nicole Blackwell:

I think it's exactly what you've just said, really. We work

Renae Hanvin:

Across

Nicole Blackwell:

The country. Yeah, well it is. We work all the way across the country. So we see all sorts of different emergency events from cyclones up north to fire flooding down south and everything else in between. And it's not just one event happening that you're sort of dealing with. There's often cyclones in the north floods down in the west and fires happening somewhere in the south. That's happening at the same time. So it's about managing all those different things all at once, which is really challenging the longer durations. Again, people get fatigued very, very quickly and when you're fatigued, your decision making process gets diminished rapidly. So it's about looking after your emergency management teams and your liaison officers and the people on the ground. How do we keep going through these events that continuously keep coming at us? And then the biggest thing I think for community perspective is the cascading impact.

So if power goes out, then telco goes out, transport is affected, water supplies can be affected. It's really that compounding effect where life as you knew it literally five minutes ago isn't there anymore. And if you haven't got a plan, I haven't thought about that before, you're kind of just, "Oh, what do I do? " It's really

Renae Hanvin:

Tricky because when disruptions occur, that left brain, right brain, you can be the most organized person, but when you're in that situation, you're not that thinking in that normal kind of practical way. So really it is so important to have that kind of what if, what would I do? And then also not just you. I think too, it's not just reliant on like one person in a household or one person in a business or one person in a not - for-profit. It really should be part of the culture. So everyone's kind of thinking about it and coming on that journey as well. So in the sense then from I guess the connectivity resilience perspective, given that we have all these frequent and complex and then they're overlapping in that, how do you plan for that? Is it like an all hazards approach? We ultimately have the same approaches for all hazards for 80% and then the 20% is a bit different or do you have separate kind of approaches totally depending on what it was?

How do you plan for all the different things?

Nicole Blackwell:

I think that you've always got to plan for what you haven't planned for at the moment. It's not necessarily thinking in terms of events anymore. We really work on continuous preparedness. So we've got this campaign that we call EM365. So we're literally every single day of the year we are thinking about emergency management and that really means, yes, planning for all those different types of hazard and impact, but more than that, it's relationships. So staying connected with local communities, emergency services and governments, all levels of government from local government through to federal all year round. It's not just about the events. The events, how well you go and restore in those events actually all the hard work you've done before that will determine how well or how you succeed. So it's the preparation that is absolute key. So having that consistent approach with how we communicate before, during and after.

So they're my favorite words, before, during, and after. But yeah, all the work you put in before means that the during and after won't be so hard. So yeah, it's less about predicting exactly what will happen or where it's more about being ready to respond in that coordinated consistent way when it does.

Renae Hanvin:

I love it. So I talk a lot about connections and conversations. So I have to do my hashtag social capital because building those bridging ties and linking ties again, it's not just about a community member building connections with their other community people and then those in roles of authority and power. It's also within organizations. So like within the NBN, making sure that you've got those bonding, bridging and linking ties and also within the sector. So again, with your competitors or the other critical infrastructures as well. So music to my ears by saying that having those connections before because they're absolutely fundamental. And I know Joe Garnet from Safecom in SA, she has a coffee cake and a chat catch-ups and she basically mandates them. She has one or two a week because she knows the value and the importance of catching up face-to-face or online with a bit of cake.

Who doesn't love that? Now what lessons then do you think the telecommunication sector have learned from recent disasters about preparedness and recovery and sorting communities under pressure?

Nicole Blackwell:

I think for me speaking last four or so years in the telco sector, clarity. Clarity really matters. So people need simple factual information, especially when things are uncertain. Now that's not necessarily easy because it is different for every community, but it's also different for every person within that community and then it's different for every person as a resident or every person as a business owner or every person as a school student or whomever you are because you have multiple roles within a community. So clarity really matters. Consistency I think is probably the next thing. So mixed messaging, particularly across those different organizations and there's so many different organizations that are there helping in an emergency event. So that can create some confusion. So trying to get some consistency there is really important partnerships that helps

Get the consistency going so we don't do this alone. It's a coordinated effort across utilities, governments, industry, emergency services, agencies, the local GP, like I mentioned before, it's actually about all of us together and then expectations matter as well. And this is where all that work beforehand. So helping people understand what it looks like, that can reduce so much frustrations during outages because if people know and understand that this may be coming and they've prepped for it and they've given themselves options, it's less frustrating at the time. I think what we've really learned is that communication is just as important as the technical response in an emergency.

Renae Hanvin:

A thousand percent. And I think it's awesome what you're doing and what you're leading because a lot of people in communities obviously are like, either, A, it won't happen to me so I don't need to worry about it. Or they're like, "My gosh, I need to know. " We worked with a community and there was a few people and they were like, "Where's the evacuation hub going to be if we get impacted?" And it's like, "Well, we don't really know because it depends. This is not me. This is like council, here's the process." So we did a few sessions where we actually had the people who would make the decisions, come and explain how they can't tell you now because we don't really know, but it might be here and it might be here, but don't tell people that because it also might not type thing.

And it was amazing because then these people in the communities who are really passionate about making sure their community's prepared, but then now I guess upskilled with the information to understand that we don't know, but it might be this, but that's okay because now I've met the person who's going to be deciding and I know how they're going to be communicating it. It's so simple, so simple. Connections and communications. Maybe we'll just make that the tagline for disaster emergency management. Now, Nicole, I could talk to you all day, but I always end with what two things would you like to see done differently in the disaster space?

Nicole Blackwell:

Okay. So first and foremost, it is about tapping into that community. So focus more on community understanding. We have some amazing people in all of our communities around the country who know what's best for their communities. So there's still really that gap in how people understand telecommunications. And I get it because telecommunications is incredibly complex. There is no simple answer and it's very technical. So how it actually works, what can impact it, how restoration happens, that all differs depending on where you are and what technologies you're using. So helping to close that gap would make a big difference during emergencies. And we are working now to get some better industry communications out there to try and help close that gap. So that's probably the first thing.

Renae Hanvin:

I love that.

Nicole Blackwell:

And yeah, that second thing is that stronger alignment across industry. So having that communications from the telco industry rather than the individual players within it can really help because people can then understand the general telco world without needing to go into the nitty gritty, which people... I mean, I love it. I'm a tech nerd, but not everybody does, so that's perfectly okay. So helping people understand that and then communicating that in a consistent way will reduce that confusion and really just help people, help communities, help businesses, help residents make better decisions during stressful situations. That's really the key. So I think we're doing this pretty well at the moment, but there's always room for closer coordination. And then I think the bit we're not doing so well is then educating the community around what we are doing. So that's what we're sort of focusing on at the moment.

Renae Hanvin:

And I think that again, and in the corporate world, et cetera, it's a bit different, I guess to some extent because coordination perhaps is a bit harder, but taking it to the association level 1,00% because if you're sending out the same messaging to, I guess again, nudge, nudge theory, nudge the communities in their knowledge and their capabilities and their preparednes together so you can still have your own individual kind of components, but if you're doing it as a sector like insurance or there's utilities, et cetera, I think there's so much power to that because it's not multiple messaging, it's like a core messaging. So if you have different providers of your technology, and I have to say, I love technology, I'm definitely not a technology nut or nerd. I like other people who like it much, much better than me who help me do it.

But again, for the basics for people like me or the people who are not very digitally kind of savvy, so making them understand and then share it. So that's really awesome in the sense of what's being created with that community lens as opposed to the, I guess, critical infrastructure lens. Now, as I said, I can talk to you all day, but we might have to come back with another topic down the track. So thank you so much to Nicole Blackwell from NBNCo who's been talking to me today about strengthening resilience through connectivity. So I've learned so much. I know the listeners will as well and remember there's links. So if you want to see what Nicole's doing or connect with her, please do. But thanks, Nicole. We'll talk again soon.

Nicole Blackwell:

Thank you.

Renae Hanvin:

I hope today's episode of Doing Disasters Differently, the podcast has inspired you to think a little bit differently about the role you can play before, during, and after disasters. Given the new era of more frequent and compounding disasters that we are now in, let's work together to build an all hazards disaster resilient future for all. Find out more about the work I'm leading as a social enterprise, building disaster resilience at resilientready.org. Don't forget to subscribe to doing disasters differently than podcast through your preferred platform and we'll see you next time when we discover new ways of doing disasters differently together.