The emergence of mobile banking is a good example. Whilst it hasn’t yet taken off to a large degree in the uk, it is becoming easier to use your mobile phone for a variety of transactions such as paying to park, booking tickets online and so forth.

Meanwhile in Africa, mobile banking is booming because users feel it’s safer to have their money held in the cloud than to carry it with them. What might this mean for the banking sector and indeed businesses that don’t make it easy for customers to pay via mobile phone?

Although the transaction size is modest by Western standards, the volume is increasing and the overheads of operating the system are small. Added to that it’s very convenient – provided that the network is up and the phone has a charge!

Mobile banking has also been used to good effect in Haiti following the eathquakes that have damaged a lot of the traditional infrastructure – so should we look at mobile banking as a standard recovery option for areas affected by devastating natural disasters?

It would seem relatively straightforward to issue cheap, pay as you go, telephones to victims of disasters and broadband can be beamed in a spotlight fashion to areas that lack a traditional mobile mast network – I believe M12 solutions based in Fareham have provided broadband this way in southern Ireland?

So that just leaves a bit of straightforward setting up that can be done when the phone is issued via a node that is able to connect to the clients bank in order to transfer credit to the phone – of course if the customer has cash with them, that could be taken at point of issue.

But what about charging? If the electricity supply is unavailable we’d need to provide charging hubs (maybe an opportunity for Costa and Starbucks!) or perhaps solar charging capabilities.

I know that Twitter@Documentally has experimented with a variety of solar charging capabilities in the UK and I’m certain that companies are exploring how to improve these and increase their portability and resilience.

Hmm, might be worth looking into this a bit more…

Whilst it’s (a little) difficult to criticise the police for failing to prevent the first murder despite the clear tip offs they receive (undoubtedly they get plenty of similar calls?) there are still many lessons to be learned from the slow response overall.

Of course it’s very difficult to cordon a large area, and a rural area at that, using the sort of processes that the police normally adopts when responding to an incident – but perhaps that ought to prompt a re-think in tactics?  I would imagine that one of the lessons to be learned from the current situation will be that the emergency services need alternative means of achieving cordons and carrying out surveillance – probably using technology in its various forms.

It also gives a stark perspective to the challenges facing General Petraeus and the combined forces in tackling the Taliban across much large and more hostile areas in Afghanistan.

Imagine then, how much more difficult this task could be in the depths of December when we don’t have the luxury of very long daylight hours in which to carry out such a search.

I know from my years as a guided weapon system designer that the search box increases very dramatically with time so the need for speed in this case has been clearly demonstrated through the police force’s inability to locate and/or contain Moat within a know area.  The question is – why is that the case?  Were they worried about panicking the public or just slow to get the information released due to tortuous processes – my guess would be the latter having worked in a number of multi-agency GOLD commands.  We may never know.

So is speed everything in these situations?  Almost. There is little value in speed without policy, strategy and plans to provide the necessary framework that empowers staff to act appropriately at the end of a fragile command and control network.  In the military we refer to this as mission command – and ensure that everyone knows the rules of engagement and what their role and is and delegations are to maximise the effectiveness of the combined response.

So agility to opportunities – I’ve seen that somewhere before – and resilience to disruptions.

Well we haven’t truly had anything disrupting the police response and activity other than a little bit of media presence but if we had power cuts or severe weather or a debilitating stomach bug (say) amongst the deployed forces we might find the plans are more ragged even than has so far been apparent.

I can’t imagine that there is much else getting done within Northumbria police force whilst this is going on – which is why the government requires the emergency services to have tested business continuity plans in place so they don’t simply drop everything and lurch from crisis to crisis.

I think the responsiveness demonstrated during the Raoul Moat manhunt goes a long way to demonstrate the importance of agility and resilience in emergency preparedness.  Perhaps I’ll do a series of posts on this to cover some of the other emergency planning loopholes that this case reveals – for example – the police’s ability to communicate in built up or rural areas?

Business continuity and emergency preparedness planning for natural disasters is a smart move for every business owner but there are certain areas of the world where it could make the difference between life and death.

The following video is about 9 minutes long and illustrates the historical prevalence of natural disasters including several from the past 10 years.

Whilst we don’t advocate carrying a sandwich board labelled “The End Is Nigh!” and living every day as if it’s your last, we do think it’s sensible to look at the potential environmental hazards that could affect your business and your family before putting appropriate, tested, policies, strategies and plans in place to minimise the impact of possible natural disasters on your livelihood.

Please take a look at this short video and consider the likelihood of your being affected by similar incidents in your location. If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised then feel free to give us a call or fill in a contact form here