Design and initial validation of the Raster method for telecom service availability risk assessment

Crisis organisations depend on telecommunication services; unavailability of these services reduces the effectiveness of crisis response. Crisis organisations should therefore be aware of availability risks, and need a suitable risk assessment method. Such a method needs to be aware of the exceptional circumstances in which crisis organisations operate, and of the commercial structure of modern telecom services. We found that existing risk assessment methods are unsuitable for this problem domain. Hence, crisis organisations do not perform any risk assessment, trust their supplier, or rely on service level agreements, which are not meaningful during crisis situations. We have therefore developed a new risk assessment method, which we call RASTER. We have tested RASTER using a case study at the crisis organisation of a government agency, and improved the method based on the analysis of case results. Our initial validation suggests that the method can yield practical results.