As the number of Canberrans who can pay a bill, book a restaurant or send an email on their smartphone has grown, so too has an expectation that information will be at their fingertips within seconds when disaster strikes.
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Advances in technology have transformed the way the ACT Emergency Services Agency has sent messages out to the community in the past decade, as people demand faster access to alerts and more make use of social media.
Greater thirst for fast, accurate information has seen the amount of time it takes the agency to release emergency alerts slashed from five minutes to about five seconds in recent years. This is due to the Single Point of Truth (SPOT) system, which sprang from an in-house prototype that cost staff less than $500 to develop.
The agency'semergency media and digital services manager Darren Cutrupi said the SPOT system was designed to streamline the process used to push information out to the community quickly, and to allow staff to disseminate multiple messages through a single app.
''The ACT government knows how important it is to get information out to the public about any threat to community safety, whether they're known threats so people can take action, or there are steps people need to take to reduce the impact,'' he said.
''And likewise, the public has a realistic expectation that they can access any information at their fingertips with the way technology is these days.''
Previously staff used a Blackberry to send out email and SMS alerts.
Mr Cutrupi said the SPOT app meant staff could create one message to send out to members of the public, media outlets and senior government officials via SMS or email with the push of a single button.
That same message would simultaneously be posted to the agency's website and social media, including Facebook and Twitter.
''If I can be lying in bed while I pay my mobile phone bill, it's fair for people to say they should be able, in a major emergency, to access information, whether that's through alerts on our website, through social media or through news websites,'' Mr Cutrupi said.
He said there had been keen interest in the system from interstate and overseas, including New Zealand, Britain and the United States, due to its simplicity and relatively low cost.
Mr Cutrupi came up with the concept for the system, before an employee carried out the back-end digital work.
''Traditionally people spend a lot of money on these systems, but it certainly didn't cost us millions of dollars like certain systems,'' he said.
The agency released 15 emergency alerts during the restaurant blaze in Civic's Sydney Building in February, and more than 80 alerts were issued when severe thunderstorms hit the capital in February 2012.
The system is mostly used for everyday alerts, but can also be utilised to issue warnings in the event of a large-scale emergency, such as flooding or a bushfire.
It is separate to the ACT's emergency telephone warning system, which was tested in May this year.
That system attracted criticism after serious flaws came to light during the Mitchell chemical fire of 2011.