National disaster coordination system still on ice

Documents show officials have tried multiple times to build a life-saving disaster coordination system, only to end up virtually back at square one.

Almost 18 months after Cyclone Gabrielle wreaked havoc there, Hawke's Bay locals who felt ill-warned and abandoned in the face of destruction are asking what has changed.

"If Gabrielle happened again today or tomorrow the exact same thing is going to happen, nothing has changed," Daniel Gale of Esk Valley, where locals died in the February 2023 storm, told RNZ last week.

• Read more: Review finds major failings in regional council response to Cyclone Gabrielle
• Speed, scale of disaster 'overwhelmed' under-prepared officials - report
• Cyclone Gabrielle anniversary: Inside the emergency response

RNZ's inquiries show for 20 years, authorities have tried to adopt the sort of effective and enduring disaster coordination solution that other countries have invested in - then shied away from one.

In order to work, such a system - called a common operating platform, or COP - needs joined-up, up-to-the-minute geospatial data that tracks and reports to everyone who needs to know, where elements of the response are in place and time, from floodwaters to sandbags to rescue teams.

The Australian state of Victoria has had such a system since 2016 - set up after deadly bushfires - which allows thousands of users to collaborate online, almost in real time.

New Zealand's latest attempt to build a COP was abandoned just weeks ago.

The country lacks even a proper foundation for one - a so-called spatial data infrastructure. This is despite Cabinet ordering a SDI be built by 2014, saying it would boost the economy by billions of dollars.

"Organisations didn't want to share their data," someone familiar with the fraught history of the project told RNZ.

"New Zealand really missed the boat on this."

Not only has an SDI never been built, the torch-bearer for it - the national Geospatial Office, which only ever had two or three people in it anyway - folded around 2018.

As for coordination systems specific to Civil Defence, these were tried - in 2010, 2017, 2020 and 2021.

They were better than nothing, but far short of good enough, as disaster reviews - especially of 2018 and those this year - make clear.

One system - called EMI for Emergency Management Information - was set up for $5m on the promise it would let the "bunker" at the Beehive coordinate "hundreds of organisations" in a major disaster.

"It will allow us to more quickly and accurately create, and then keep up to date, what is known as a 'common operating picture'," said the government in 2010.

But later reviews made clear that system was never adequate as a common operating platform.

During Gabrielle, EMI failed to assign tasks adequately, and some emergency staff could not even access it; the system was "suboptimal", authorities concluded.

Post-Covid action

Covid threatened a slow-moving disaster. So, on the tails of it, in 2021, all the major emergency responders came together to have another go at building the platform.

Police, Fire and Emergency, Defence and the national emergency management agency (NEMA) were all in the room - assembled as the "Geospatial Information for Emergencies Leadership Group".

According to a 2022 report, they were happy for Land and Information (LINZ) to take the lead.

This month, however, the government played down the importance of the agency's work.

LINZ was "not responsible for developing a common operating platform and at no point did they plan to do this", the government told RNZ this month.

What is more, the agency had no budget for it - having had to scrape together about $200,000 to build a demonstrator, called the Common Operating Datasets for Emergency Management (CODEM).

Yet a report on phase two of the project in 2022 made clear the combined agencies knew much was riding on it.

"Relevant, reliable geospatial data does exist, however, finding this data mid-response is stressful, reliant on existing personal contacts and not always easy.

"The lack of coordination with this information has led to duplication of effort, delays and inefficient decision making," said the report, five months before Cyclone Gabrielle hit.

CODEM was never operational and no use in Gabrielle.

It was abandoned entirely in May this year, amid the public sector spending cuts.

RNZ asked for any record or minutes of the decision to cut it. There were none, LINZ said.

Land Information Minister Chris Penk told RNZ on July 17: "I do not expect any further development to the CODEM demonstrator to be undertaken for the foreseeable future as it is not a core activity for LINZ."

Penk added he had "full confidence in LINZ's ability to supply geospatial data to emergency response agencies in the event of disaster".

Reviews made clear, however, this was severely limited during Gabrielle. NEMA's own review of the storm stated: "At the time of this event NEMA had very limited geospatial capability."

What is next for NZ's emergency planning?

Almost 18 months on from the cyclone, LINZ and 2021's Geospatial Information for Emergencies Leadership Group are out of the picture.

New plans for a COP are being drawn up, again, though in a different part of the civil defence bureaucracy.

"NEMA is developing an indicative business case to address the gaps and deficiencies in its current operational systems," the agency told RNZ.

Multiple reviews had "emphasised that a COP is one of those gaps", it said.

RNZ understands the agency has a single person dedicated to the business case.

Asked if it would look at systems across the Tasman, or run a tender to find out what the market had to offer in disaster systems, the agency said: "NEMA is only in the initial stages of this project and a number of options are being considered."

Is there a stop-gap? Yes, despite its shortcomings: EMI.

"We are working to make ongoing improvements to EMI as an interim solution but we expect that EMI will ultimately need to be replaced by a system with greater functionality," NEMA said.