How to assess telecom service availability risks for crisis organisations?

Crisis organisations, such as fire services, disaster relief and emergency medical care, nowa- days depend on telecommunications services in an unprecedented manner. Unavailability of these services during a crisis may cost lives. In order not to be caught unprepared, crisis organisations should perform a risk assessment on telecom services availability. This risk assessment must take many factors into account. Some of these factors can be quantified objectively, but many factors are of a qualitative or even subjec- tive nature. We call these risk factors social factors. Existing risk assessment methods either cannot handle social factors, or do not meet all of the requirements of crisis organisations. Many crisis organisations therefore do not assess their telecom service availability risks. In this paper we propose a structured way to include social risk factors into qualitative risk descriptions. This is an important step towards a risk assess- ment method for telecom services used by crisis organisations which we are currently developing.