A new method to assess telecom service availability risks

Protection of society against natural and man-made disasters is high on the societal and political agenda. Effective crisis management is more important than ever. Nowadays, crisis organisations depend crucially on reliable telecom services, and unexpected failure of telecommunication may have serious consequences. In order not to be caught unprepared, crisis organisations should therefore perform a risk assessment on telecom availability. Unfortunately, assessment of availability risks of modern, multi-operator telecom services is difficult; information sources are unreliable, and the relevant information is uncertain and difficult to obtain. This paper describes some of these difficulties, as well as the requirements of availability risk assessment methods for crisis telecommunication services. The paper outlines a new method that can be applied without requiring full knowledge of the physical layout of the telecom infrastructure. This new method relies on telecom service diagrams as a tool for risk analysis and to facilitate dialogue among the analysts. Keywords: Availability; Crisis management; Risk assessment; Telecommunication service