Risk Management and Assessment Workshop for Critical
Infrastructure Protection, 28th -29th November 2005

This RNSA sponsored workshop was intended to bring together, academics, government,
owners and operators of infrastructure and risk practitioners to capture the different views
on how risk management and analysis can be improved to further the protection of
Australian Infrastructure and how to build research partnerships between Industry,
Government and Academia. The workshop, I believe was a successful, start to the
process of forging closer links and has produced some outcomes that can be worked on
for the future. This could not have been achieved without the participation and discussion
from everyone who attended the workshop and I thank everyone for that.

I would particularly like to thank the invited speakers, Mr Mike Rothery, Mr Angus
Bruce and Prof. Rob Melchers, for presenting both their organisational and personal
experiences of risk management and assessment in this context. Dr. Collette Burke and
Dr. Colin Duffield should be congratulated on their hard work and assistance given to me
during the workshop, not only presenting the findings of a desktop review but also
chairing workshop sessions and collating much of the information that was discussed. A
special mention should also be made of Ms Maggie Burke, who captured on computer the
thrust of all presentations and musings of the workshop groups and Prof Jean Cross, who
lead the forum discussions. I would also like to thank Ms. Jane Nathan and Prof. Michael
Loosemore for assisting with chairing the workshop groups, and the researchers who took
the trouble to prepare and present papers on current work in this area.
 

I think there were three main themes that came across in the two days of discussion,
Governance, Communication and Resilience, although each of these appeared in different
guises at different times. Governance goes to the heart of what we as a Nation require in
the behaviour of governments, organisations and individuals. This raises serious
fundamental issues of how the nation should develop, what international agreements it
should be bound by and how these translate into statute. It also raises issues of
transparency between Government, organisations and the general public and the right to
know as opposed the need to know. All of these set the context of how risk is appraised,
perceived and treated.

Communication was raised as an issue in several contexts: as a serious barrier to timely
provision of high quality information that allows organisations to manage their risks, the
degree of access to information for the many medium and small businesses that form part
of critical infrastructure and the types of tools that could be developed for analysis of
diverse and sparse information to improve the quality of information and analysis.
Communication was also raised as an issue in better management of emergencies
 

Resilience came about as a theme from the many discussions on vulnerability of people,
structures and systems. Although definitions varied in this debate, a key point for future
consideration is how do we really measure the degree of vulnerability and resilience in
complex interconnected systems, given the wide range of threats and their consequences
that may affect infrastructure. I don’t think anyone as yet really has the answers to this.
 

A parallel way forward for a research strategy in risk is for RNSA to develop a
communication strategy based on the outcomes being sent to you and to hold a series of
case study based fora to look at how these issues do related to particular industries or
types of threats.

Tony Green
School of Safety Science
University of New South Wales

For details about the Summary and Details of the proceedings of the workshop, please refer to the following document:

RNSA Risk Workshop: Summary of Outcomes