Risky Bites: Radios and Airport Ground Crew
Welcome to Risky Bites – a new series on the blog that will take a short form and seek reader input.
Anyone who regularly flies in Australia will often get the announcement from cabin crew to “… as we will be refueling, please switch off your mobile phone whilst on the tarmac..”. We know that the risk of a mobile phone causing an explosion is vanishingly small, if it’s even possible. But I always see ground crew using radios, which makes me wonder:
Are the radios that are used by airport ground crew intrinsically safe?
If you know, please chime in in the comments.
Introducing Casus Calamitas Consulting
If you frequent this blog you will have noticed a slight change of format. This is the soft launch of my new business – Casus Calamitas Consulting.
In this business I aim to continue what I’ve started in this blog – covering difficult topics and research to inform the emergency management community. Casus Calamitas Consulting bridges the gap between research and practice, helping organisations process complex information into sound emergency management.
Please check out the new sections of the website or get in touch if you are interested in the services I provide.
In other news I will be starting a PhD in Risk and Emergency Management at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Pavia, Italy in September.
Budget 2013-14: A disaster wrap-up
Today the Federal Government released its election year budget. Whilst most folk are talking deficits, loss of entitlements and so forth I’ll focus on disasters of a different sort.
Though the Federal Government does do a lot of counter-disaster work through its agencies (such as the Attorney General’s Department, Bureau of Meteorology, Department of Defence and Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) they don’t appear to have any new expenditure items this year, or significant cuts. This leaves the money provided to the states and territories for mitigation and recovery (contained in Budget Paper 3). (more…)
Defence White Paper – A disaster focus?
Today the Federal Government released a new Defence White Paper. Given all the discussion about the use of the ADF in disaster operations I thought I’d given it a review from a disaster and humanitarian response perspective.
The new paper contains 26 references to disaster operations, down from 31 references in the 2009 White Paper.
Casus Calamitas 