Utrecht (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - With Bushfires in Western Australia's Goldfields region & floods in Mackay, Australia's emergency services are needed more than ever but many are unreachable.
WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Australian Emergency Services organisations for errors, availability & performance. Only one of the 26 monitored sites was found to have 'good' uptime while seven sites had 'serious user issues'. Another disturbing finding was that during the Mackay floods on the 15th of February, a time when residents needed information and support from their emergency services, Queensland's Ambulance, Fire (Rural & Metropolitan) and Police sites all encountered serious errors and were unavailable for considerable periods of time.
After a month's monitoring, WatchMouse combined the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements of a site to calculate its Site Performance Index (SPI).
An SPI of less than or equal to 1000 represents a 'well performing' site, 1001 - 1999 is regarded as an 'acceptable' SPI while an SPI score of greater than or equal to 2000 represents a site with 'serious user issues'.
Of the 26 sites monitored, those with the worst SPI included that of the Australian Federal Police with an SPI 2,990, the Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade site with an SPI 2,756 and the Victorian Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority site which scored SPI 2,604. All of these poor SPI rankings were due to very slow load times.
In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site's uptime as 'good' if it is greater than or equal to 99.9 per cent, 'OK' between 99.89 per cent -- 99.01 per cent and 'poor' if it is less than or equal to 99 per cent.
Alarmingly, only the site of ACT Rural Fire Brigade had a 'good' uptime result. The majority of sites ranked as 'OK' while three Emergency Services' sites ranked as 'poor'. The site with the lowest uptime was that of WA's Ambulance Service with 92.44 per cent.
WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said, "99 per cent uptime sounds great but when you actually calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That's one working day per month! The Emergency Services phone lines could not be down for a day each month so why is it acceptable for the site? Mackay represents a small proportion (approx. 4 per cent) of Queensland's total population but given that the sites of Queensland Emergency Services struggled during the Mackay floods, we can only imagine what will happen to those sites in the case of a disaster on a greater scale, when 100s of thousands of people attempt to visit."
To view the results of the monitoring, including an SPI graph and information about the WatchMouse monitoring methodology visit: www.watchmouse.com/en/SPI/2008
performance_australian_emergency_sites.php
About WatchMouse
Companies can easily monitor the performance of their web sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in over 70 countries and checks from 25+ locations and networks worldwide (see: http://www.watchmouse.com).
SOURCE WatchMouse
CONTACT: Mark Pors, +31-302522400, mark@watchmouse.com
Web site: http://www.watchmouse.com
WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Australian Emergency Services organisations for errors, availability & performance. Only one of the 26 monitored sites was found to have 'good' uptime while seven sites had 'serious user issues'. Another disturbing finding was that during the Mackay floods on the 15th of February, a time when residents needed information and support from their emergency services, Queensland's Ambulance, Fire (Rural & Metropolitan) and Police sites all encountered serious errors and were unavailable for considerable periods of time.
After a month's monitoring, WatchMouse combined the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements of a site to calculate its Site Performance Index (SPI).
An SPI of less than or equal to 1000 represents a 'well performing' site, 1001 - 1999 is regarded as an 'acceptable' SPI while an SPI score of greater than or equal to 2000 represents a site with 'serious user issues'.
Of the 26 sites monitored, those with the worst SPI included that of the Australian Federal Police with an SPI 2,990, the Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade site with an SPI 2,756 and the Victorian Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority site which scored SPI 2,604. All of these poor SPI rankings were due to very slow load times.
In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site's uptime as 'good' if it is greater than or equal to 99.9 per cent, 'OK' between 99.89 per cent -- 99.01 per cent and 'poor' if it is less than or equal to 99 per cent.
Alarmingly, only the site of ACT Rural Fire Brigade had a 'good' uptime result. The majority of sites ranked as 'OK' while three Emergency Services' sites ranked as 'poor'. The site with the lowest uptime was that of WA's Ambulance Service with 92.44 per cent.
WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said, "99 per cent uptime sounds great but when you actually calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That's one working day per month! The Emergency Services phone lines could not be down for a day each month so why is it acceptable for the site? Mackay represents a small proportion (approx. 4 per cent) of Queensland's total population but given that the sites of Queensland Emergency Services struggled during the Mackay floods, we can only imagine what will happen to those sites in the case of a disaster on a greater scale, when 100s of thousands of people attempt to visit."
To view the results of the monitoring, including an SPI graph and information about the WatchMouse monitoring methodology visit: www.watchmouse.com/en/SPI/2008
performance_australian_emergency_sites.php
About WatchMouse
Companies can easily monitor the performance of their web sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in over 70 countries and checks from 25+ locations and networks worldwide (see: http://www.watchmouse.com).
SOURCE WatchMouse
CONTACT: Mark Pors, +31-302522400, mark@watchmouse.com
Web site: http://www.watchmouse.com
COPYRIGHT © 2008 - ANTARANEWS
