Jul 4, 2025
Built to Connect: Operations as a Digital Bridge
In emergency management, the word "operation" typically evokes large-scale events - bushfire suppression, flood evacuations, or coordinated search-and-rescue missions. But what if it could also represent something digital? A shared structure for coordination - regardless of agency or system.
Read more
While working with NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) under the Natural Hazards Technology Program, Kablamo was tasked with rethinking how Command-and-Control systems could support faster, smarter, and more coordinated responses. Through that work—and in collaboration with other NSW emergency agencies—we landed on a powerful idea: What if “an Operation” became a universal, system-neutral bridge between agencies?
As we explored cross-agency coordination, we began to see “Operation” as more than just a label for response. It had the potential to mirror real-world collaboration and serve as a digital token for multi-system coordination—a shared object, a common language that could move fluidly between agencies, their unique systems, and jurisdictions—without requiring centralisation or uniformity.
Why a Universal System Isn’t the Answer
Let’s start with the obvious: expecting every emergency agency to abandon their existing systems for a single universal platform would be complex, politically fraught, and financially reckless. Each agency has its own mandate, workflows, and domain-specific needs.
Just as a firetruck doesn’t look—or operate—anything like a police patrol car. Their digital systems reflect the same reality: different tools for different missions. And that’s exactly how it should be.
What we need isn’t uniformity. It’s interoperability.
Operation as a Token: Anchoring Automation in Context
For automation to truly support emergency decision-making, it needs more than just access to data–it needs context. Not just isolated facts, but a structured understanding of the broader operation it’s contributing to: who’s involved, what’s at stake, where it’s happening, and how it’s evolving.
This insight came to life while designing the Command-and-Control function in the RFS’ Bushfire Intelligence Platform, Athena. The function, intended as being an intelligent execution layer–capable of integrating the many specialised systems used by the RFS, anticipating operational needs, tasking resources, and allowing users to focus on critical decision points like approvals and overrides, rather than manual coordination.
But without operational context, even the most advanced automation can misfire–duplicating effort dispatching the wrong resource, or in the worst case, delaying life-saving response.
To solve for this, we embedded the concept of an Operation directly into Athena. Not as a disconnected label, but as a digital, structured, spatially-aware object—declared by a lead agency and subscribed to by others. It holds core operational data—location, hazard type, declared control status, responding agencies—and becomes a single source of truth that connected systems can read from, contribute to, and act upon.
In doing so, the Operation becomes the anchor point for intelligent automation—a token that ties systems together within a shared operational context. It enables “plug-and-play” coordination, where existing platforms don’t need to be replaced, just connected.
At a broader scale, this means agencies don’t need to log into separate tools to collaborate. Instead, the Operation is surfaced within their native systems—mapped to internal workflows, protocols, and data models. The result is a shared operational picture delivered through familiar interfaces.
This framework is built around two key concepts:
Declared Operations: Created by the lead combat agency (e.g. RFS for bushfires or the State Emergency Service for floods), signalling formal control and operational responsibility.
Assigned Operations: Allow supporting agencies to join the operation, preserving role clarity while enabling shared awareness and coordination.
The result mirrors real-world operational dynamics between emergency response agencies—while removing ambiguity from digital coordination.
Beyond Emergencies: A Shared Language for Complex Events
What we uncovered during the engagement was that this model isn’t limited to natural disasters. It applies equally to planned civic operations—such as the use of RFS appliances as blockades during Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations or the ANZAC Day march; Surf Life Saving NSW providing water safety and first aid during Sydney’s Vivid Festival; or multi-agency coordination around road closures for festivals and parades.
These events require many of the same capabilities as emergency response: temporary road closures, modified dispatch protocols, pre-positioned resources, aerial surveillance, and ongoing coordination across multiple government entities.
In these scenarios, the Department of Premier and Cabinet could declare an Operation, with emergency services and local government agencies subscribing to it. This approach keeps systems and teams aligned—without the need for a single shared platform.
Reusable by Design: Enabling Continuity Across the Event Lifecycle
One of the most powerful aspects of the Operation model is that it’s reusable. Whether responding to an unfolding emergency or preparing for a planned civic event, agencies can draw on familiar structures, processes, and shared data models to stand up operations faster and with greater clarity.
Because Operations are structured digital objects, they don’t vanish once an event concludes. They can be archived, versioned, or reactivated—carrying forward lessons learned, operational boundaries, resource assignments, and inter-agency roles. This continuity enables faster mobilisation, smoother collaboration, and fewer mistakes the next time a similar event occurs.
It also opens the door to pre-planned, templated Operations: predefined configurations for recurring events like ANZAC Day, Vivid, or bushfire season readiness. These templates can be adapted as needed, but they provide a consistent foundation for planning, execution, and coordination.
In short, the Operation becomes more than just a live coordination tool—it becomes a living record of how we respond, adapt, and improve over time.
In Summary
We don’t need every agency to use the same system — and we shouldn’t expect them to. But by adopting a universal, system-neutral token like the Operation, we can bridge the gaps between platforms, hazards, and jurisdictions.
It’s not just a feature. It’s a shared digital language—one that keeps pace with crisis and adapts to complexity.
And because that language flows through each agency’s native tools, it meets people where they work—enabling true interoperability, without disruption.
Jul 4, 2025
Built to Connect: Operations as a Digital Bridge
In emergency management, the word "operation" typically evokes large-scale events - bushfire suppression, flood evacuations, or coordinated search-and-rescue missions. But what if it could also represent something digital? A shared structure for coordination - regardless of agency or system.
Read more
While working with NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) under the Natural Hazards Technology Program, Kablamo was tasked with rethinking how Command-and-Control systems could support faster, smarter, and more coordinated responses. Through that work—and in collaboration with other NSW emergency agencies—we landed on a powerful idea: What if “an Operation” became a universal, system-neutral bridge between agencies?
As we explored cross-agency coordination, we began to see “Operation” as more than just a label for response. It had the potential to mirror real-world collaboration and serve as a digital token for multi-system coordination—a shared object, a common language that could move fluidly between agencies, their unique systems, and jurisdictions—without requiring centralisation or uniformity.
Why a Universal System Isn’t the Answer
Let’s start with the obvious: expecting every emergency agency to abandon their existing systems for a single universal platform would be complex, politically fraught, and financially reckless. Each agency has its own mandate, workflows, and domain-specific needs.
Just as a firetruck doesn’t look—or operate—anything like a police patrol car. Their digital systems reflect the same reality: different tools for different missions. And that’s exactly how it should be.
What we need isn’t uniformity. It’s interoperability.
Operation as a Token: Anchoring Automation in Context
For automation to truly support emergency decision-making, it needs more than just access to data–it needs context. Not just isolated facts, but a structured understanding of the broader operation it’s contributing to: who’s involved, what’s at stake, where it’s happening, and how it’s evolving.
This insight came to life while designing the Command-and-Control function in the RFS’ Bushfire Intelligence Platform, Athena. The function, intended as being an intelligent execution layer–capable of integrating the many specialised systems used by the RFS, anticipating operational needs, tasking resources, and allowing users to focus on critical decision points like approvals and overrides, rather than manual coordination.
But without operational context, even the most advanced automation can misfire–duplicating effort dispatching the wrong resource, or in the worst case, delaying life-saving response.
To solve for this, we embedded the concept of an Operation directly into Athena. Not as a disconnected label, but as a digital, structured, spatially-aware object—declared by a lead agency and subscribed to by others. It holds core operational data—location, hazard type, declared control status, responding agencies—and becomes a single source of truth that connected systems can read from, contribute to, and act upon.
In doing so, the Operation becomes the anchor point for intelligent automation—a token that ties systems together within a shared operational context. It enables “plug-and-play” coordination, where existing platforms don’t need to be replaced, just connected.
At a broader scale, this means agencies don’t need to log into separate tools to collaborate. Instead, the Operation is surfaced within their native systems—mapped to internal workflows, protocols, and data models. The result is a shared operational picture delivered through familiar interfaces.
This framework is built around two key concepts:
Declared Operations: Created by the lead combat agency (e.g. RFS for bushfires or the State Emergency Service for floods), signalling formal control and operational responsibility.
Assigned Operations: Allow supporting agencies to join the operation, preserving role clarity while enabling shared awareness and coordination.
The result mirrors real-world operational dynamics between emergency response agencies—while removing ambiguity from digital coordination.
Beyond Emergencies: A Shared Language for Complex Events
What we uncovered during the engagement was that this model isn’t limited to natural disasters. It applies equally to planned civic operations—such as the use of RFS appliances as blockades during Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations or the ANZAC Day march; Surf Life Saving NSW providing water safety and first aid during Sydney’s Vivid Festival; or multi-agency coordination around road closures for festivals and parades.
These events require many of the same capabilities as emergency response: temporary road closures, modified dispatch protocols, pre-positioned resources, aerial surveillance, and ongoing coordination across multiple government entities.
In these scenarios, the Department of Premier and Cabinet could declare an Operation, with emergency services and local government agencies subscribing to it. This approach keeps systems and teams aligned—without the need for a single shared platform.
Reusable by Design: Enabling Continuity Across the Event Lifecycle
One of the most powerful aspects of the Operation model is that it’s reusable. Whether responding to an unfolding emergency or preparing for a planned civic event, agencies can draw on familiar structures, processes, and shared data models to stand up operations faster and with greater clarity.
Because Operations are structured digital objects, they don’t vanish once an event concludes. They can be archived, versioned, or reactivated—carrying forward lessons learned, operational boundaries, resource assignments, and inter-agency roles. This continuity enables faster mobilisation, smoother collaboration, and fewer mistakes the next time a similar event occurs.
It also opens the door to pre-planned, templated Operations: predefined configurations for recurring events like ANZAC Day, Vivid, or bushfire season readiness. These templates can be adapted as needed, but they provide a consistent foundation for planning, execution, and coordination.
In short, the Operation becomes more than just a live coordination tool—it becomes a living record of how we respond, adapt, and improve over time.
In Summary
We don’t need every agency to use the same system — and we shouldn’t expect them to. But by adopting a universal, system-neutral token like the Operation, we can bridge the gaps between platforms, hazards, and jurisdictions.
It’s not just a feature. It’s a shared digital language—one that keeps pace with crisis and adapts to complexity.
And because that language flows through each agency’s native tools, it meets people where they work—enabling true interoperability, without disruption.
Jul 4, 2025
Built to Connect: Operations as a Digital Bridge
In emergency management, the word "operation" typically evokes large-scale events - bushfire suppression, flood evacuations, or coordinated search-and-rescue missions. But what if it could also represent something digital? A shared structure for coordination - regardless of agency or system.
Read more
While working with NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) under the Natural Hazards Technology Program, Kablamo was tasked with rethinking how Command-and-Control systems could support faster, smarter, and more coordinated responses. Through that work—and in collaboration with other NSW emergency agencies—we landed on a powerful idea: What if “an Operation” became a universal, system-neutral bridge between agencies?
As we explored cross-agency coordination, we began to see “Operation” as more than just a label for response. It had the potential to mirror real-world collaboration and serve as a digital token for multi-system coordination—a shared object, a common language that could move fluidly between agencies, their unique systems, and jurisdictions—without requiring centralisation or uniformity.
Why a Universal System Isn’t the Answer
Let’s start with the obvious: expecting every emergency agency to abandon their existing systems for a single universal platform would be complex, politically fraught, and financially reckless. Each agency has its own mandate, workflows, and domain-specific needs.
Just as a firetruck doesn’t look—or operate—anything like a police patrol car. Their digital systems reflect the same reality: different tools for different missions. And that’s exactly how it should be.
What we need isn’t uniformity. It’s interoperability.
Operation as a Token: Anchoring Automation in Context
For automation to truly support emergency decision-making, it needs more than just access to data–it needs context. Not just isolated facts, but a structured understanding of the broader operation it’s contributing to: who’s involved, what’s at stake, where it’s happening, and how it’s evolving.
This insight came to life while designing the Command-and-Control function in the RFS’ Bushfire Intelligence Platform, Athena. The function, intended as being an intelligent execution layer–capable of integrating the many specialised systems used by the RFS, anticipating operational needs, tasking resources, and allowing users to focus on critical decision points like approvals and overrides, rather than manual coordination.
But without operational context, even the most advanced automation can misfire–duplicating effort dispatching the wrong resource, or in the worst case, delaying life-saving response.
To solve for this, we embedded the concept of an Operation directly into Athena. Not as a disconnected label, but as a digital, structured, spatially-aware object—declared by a lead agency and subscribed to by others. It holds core operational data—location, hazard type, declared control status, responding agencies—and becomes a single source of truth that connected systems can read from, contribute to, and act upon.
In doing so, the Operation becomes the anchor point for intelligent automation—a token that ties systems together within a shared operational context. It enables “plug-and-play” coordination, where existing platforms don’t need to be replaced, just connected.
At a broader scale, this means agencies don’t need to log into separate tools to collaborate. Instead, the Operation is surfaced within their native systems—mapped to internal workflows, protocols, and data models. The result is a shared operational picture delivered through familiar interfaces.
This framework is built around two key concepts:
Declared Operations: Created by the lead combat agency (e.g. RFS for bushfires or the State Emergency Service for floods), signalling formal control and operational responsibility.
Assigned Operations: Allow supporting agencies to join the operation, preserving role clarity while enabling shared awareness and coordination.
The result mirrors real-world operational dynamics between emergency response agencies—while removing ambiguity from digital coordination.
Beyond Emergencies: A Shared Language for Complex Events
What we uncovered during the engagement was that this model isn’t limited to natural disasters. It applies equally to planned civic operations—such as the use of RFS appliances as blockades during Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations or the ANZAC Day march; Surf Life Saving NSW providing water safety and first aid during Sydney’s Vivid Festival; or multi-agency coordination around road closures for festivals and parades.
These events require many of the same capabilities as emergency response: temporary road closures, modified dispatch protocols, pre-positioned resources, aerial surveillance, and ongoing coordination across multiple government entities.
In these scenarios, the Department of Premier and Cabinet could declare an Operation, with emergency services and local government agencies subscribing to it. This approach keeps systems and teams aligned—without the need for a single shared platform.
Reusable by Design: Enabling Continuity Across the Event Lifecycle
One of the most powerful aspects of the Operation model is that it’s reusable. Whether responding to an unfolding emergency or preparing for a planned civic event, agencies can draw on familiar structures, processes, and shared data models to stand up operations faster and with greater clarity.
Because Operations are structured digital objects, they don’t vanish once an event concludes. They can be archived, versioned, or reactivated—carrying forward lessons learned, operational boundaries, resource assignments, and inter-agency roles. This continuity enables faster mobilisation, smoother collaboration, and fewer mistakes the next time a similar event occurs.
It also opens the door to pre-planned, templated Operations: predefined configurations for recurring events like ANZAC Day, Vivid, or bushfire season readiness. These templates can be adapted as needed, but they provide a consistent foundation for planning, execution, and coordination.
In short, the Operation becomes more than just a live coordination tool—it becomes a living record of how we respond, adapt, and improve over time.
In Summary
We don’t need every agency to use the same system — and we shouldn’t expect them to. But by adopting a universal, system-neutral token like the Operation, we can bridge the gaps between platforms, hazards, and jurisdictions.
It’s not just a feature. It’s a shared digital language—one that keeps pace with crisis and adapts to complexity.
And because that language flows through each agency’s native tools, it meets people where they work—enabling true interoperability, without disruption.