Department of Premier and Cabinet Tasmania Achieves 100% Uptime Availability for Citizen-Facing Emergency Alerts Platform Using Multi-Region Deployments

Tasmania frequently experiences emergencies such as bushfires and floods, requiring a reliable system for disseminating emergency alerts.

However, the delivery of emergency information in Tasmania was previously fragmented across multiple websites, including the Tasmanian Fire Service, Tasmania Police, and the State Emergency Service. This fragmentation made it difficult for residents to find reliable information promptly during emergencies.

In 2013, DPAC launched the TasALERT platform to consolidate information from different sources, aiming to provide credible and timely notifications to its residents. However, the platform mainly republished alerts from other sources, causing potential delays in crucial information dissemination. Additionally, the legacy platform lacked the robust infrastructure required to ensure continuous operation during regional outages, creating information gaps if one system failed.

DPAC identified the need for a centralized platform that could deliver near real-time alerts. The new platform required high availability, reliability, and scalability to ensure the highest possible uptime and handle traffic surges during emergencies. In 2021, the agency decided to redesign the TasALERT platform to improve its emergency response capabilities and enhance public safety for all residents.

Recognizing the importance of a reliable and scalable emergency alert system, DPAC engaged AWS Partner Ionata Digital to overhaul the TasALERT platform. The new system now delivers near real-time emergency updates, providing Tasmanian residents with timely emergency information.

For high availability and resiliency, TasALERT leverages AWS’s multi-region infrastructure in Australia, including the newly launched Melbourne Region in January 2023, alongside the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. Each region comprises three Availability Zones, each with independent power, cooling, and physical security, connected by redundant, ultra-low latency networks. To ensure maximum fault tolerance active/active hosting was implemented for TasALERT across both regions. This approach, a first for an Australian public agency, helps enable uninterrupted operations and resilience, even during rare regional service impairments, while ensuring all data remains securely stored within Australia.

TasALERT leverages several AWS services to ensure high performance, scalability, and reliability. AWS Elastic Beanstalk automatically scales resources to handle traffic surges, while AWS Lambda processes incoming alerts in real-time. Amazon CloudFront accelerates content delivery, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) efficiently manages static content, improving load times and user experience. Amazon API Gateway seamlessly manages high volumes of concurrent API calls from various emergency services, while Amazon DynamoDB provides fast and reliable data storage for real-time alerts. Through this combination of services, TasALERT can maintain near 100% availability, even during high-traffic emergency events, ensuring Tasmanian residents receive critical information quickly and reliably.

The successful transformation of the TasALERT platform on AWS has revolutionized DPAC's emergency management capabilities. This has set a new standard for public safety communication in Australia. Over 650,000 users visited TasALERT in the year leading up to June 2024, with an average engagement time of 2.5 minutes per visit. The platform has become the central hub for emergency communications in Tasmania, providing real-time, life-saving information to the residents. The accessibility to critical updates not only helps in immediate preparations but also provides a sense of security and reassurance to the community, knowing they are informed and able to respond effectively to any crisis.

“It was essential that the hosting solution for TasALERT can withstand huge spikes in usage by members of the public in the event of a bushfire or flood” said Martin Anderson, CEO and Founder, Ionata Digital. “The fact that the TasALERT platform has achieved 100% availability and uptime since launch, including during a number of emergency events, is a testament to the strength of the multi-region cloud architecture that we can deliver with AWS.”

The redesigned TasALERT platform now consolidates alerts from various services and delivers real-time updates during crises such as floods, bushfires, extreme weather and even cyber security events, ensuring Tasmanians are informed and well-prepared during emergencies. The platform's robust performance during recent natural disasters has demonstrated its effectiveness in keeping the community safe.

Building on this success, DPAC has recently launched a companion mobile application for TasALERT. This app introduced an innovative feature called WatchZones, further extending the reach of emergency alerts and making critical information even more accessible to Tasmanian residents. This initiative enhances the state's emergency response capabilities, ensuring that vital information is delivered to residents wherever they are in real time.

“Using AWS has increased our confidence in providing timely emergency information and warnings to the community. The multi-jurisdictional infrastructure provides us with the comfort that our platform will reliably deliver important information the community needs, particularly during emergencies” – Todd Crawford, Executive Director, Resilience and Recovery Tasmania.

To learn more, visit aws.amazon.com/government-education/government.