Disasters and Digital Data: A case study
The disaster outlined in this paper was a major fire event in one of two main data centres at The University of Queensland’s main campus at St Lucia, Brisbane, which occurred at 4.30am on Sunday 22 August 2010. The fire was caused by a UPS (uninterpretable power supply), located in the data centre, catching fire. The resulting power failure cut off the power supply to the banks of servers that host the University’s digital services with the fire releasing acrid smoke and particulates into this sensitive environment.