Welcome to the first edition of 'Ruminations' by John Salter. 'Ruminations' is a newsletter sharing my reflections on what ought to have been known - and done - about risk, and its management.

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Getting Warnings "Right"

While recognising it is “easy” to be wise after the event, it is also still useful - and fundamental - to learn from the past and improve our performance in the future. Following on from the controversies around the NSW bushfires of the last week, my main reflections on warnings are:

Warnings should be a last line of defence. The 'fallback' risk treatment when prevention measures fail. In an era when risk transfer is viewed favourably - due in the main to cost constraints - it is important to recognise that whenever and wherever risks are transferred, they should be transferred with linked enabling processes around awareness and capacity building. If not, the vulnerability of those at risk is increased. If it is a core policy to have warning as the default minimum necessary and sufficient "treatment" - and other strategies are not taken up - then warning needs to be done very well.

Messages sit within a broader warning system. The criteria for structuring good messages - which focus on clearly advising preferred action - has been well known for more than fifty years. The principle of using multiple channels or pathways to reach the diverse demographic of people at risk has also been well known - but is much more difficult to implement. Indeed a reliance on single sources or channels - with their own limitations and vulnerabilities - is inherently risky, especially when there are limitations related to the reliability of technologies and infrastructure.

The focus of the system needs to be on the one outcome - on the one key performance indicator - to elicit appropriate protective behaviour.

The system centres on four key questions that should drive disaster response - these questions make up an 'Executive Agenda'. It is interesting to note that these four prompts can be usefully applied to manage any crisis in any context.