Working as one: a road map to disaster resilience for Australia

This report offers a roadmap for enhancing Australia’s disaster resilience, building on the 2011 National Strategy for Disaster Resilience. It includes a snapshot of relevant issues and current resilience efforts in Australia, outlining key challenges and opportunities. Overview Natural disasters cause widespread disruption, costing the Australian economy $6.3 billion per year, and those costs are projected to rise incrementally to$23 billion by 2050. With more frequent natural disasters with greater consequences, Australian communities need the ability to prepare and plan for them, absorb and recover from them, and adapt more successfully to their effects. Enhancing Australian resilience will allow us to better anticipate disasters and assist in planning to reduce losses, rather than just waiting for the next king hit and paying for it afterwards. This report offers a roadmap for enhancing Australia’s disaster resilience, building on the 2011 National Strategy for Disaster Resilience. It includes a snapshot of relevant issues and current resilience efforts in Australia, outlining key challenges and opportunities. The report sets out 11 recommendations to help guide Australia towards increasing national resilience, from individuals and local communities through to state and federal agencies

Cost-Efficient Data Backup for Data Center Networks against {\epsilon}-Time Early Warning Disaster

Data backup in data center networks (DCNs) is critical to minimize the data loss under disaster. This paper considers the cost-efficient data backup for DCNs against a disaster with $\varepsilon$ early warning time. Given geo-distributed DCNs and such a $\varepsilon$-time early warning disaster, we investigate the issue of how to back up the data in DCN nodes under risk to other safe DCN nodes within the $\varepsilon$ early warning time constraint, which is significant because it is an emergency data protection scheme against a predictable disaster and also help DCN operators to build a complete backup scheme, i.e., regular backup and emergency backup. Specifically, an Integer Linear Program (ILP)-based theoretical framework is proposed to identify the optimal selections of backup DCN nodes and data transmission paths, such that the overall data backup cost is minimized. Extensive numerical results are also provided to illustrate the proposed framework for DCN data backup

Federalism and Domestic Disasters: Promoting a Balanced Response

In response to the widespread devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina, many people have called for strengthening the federal government's involvement in responding to catastrophic emergencies. Although enhancements to federal capabilities in this area are necessary, such steps should not obscure the principle that any homeland security system must be national, not just federal. A truly robust U.S. response to domestic disasters will require a strong contribution by state and local governments, the private sector, voluntary associations, community-based groups, and individuals to prevent and manage terrorist attacks and natural disasters. The federal government can assist in many areas, but its programs should aim to supplement, not supplant, national homeland security efforts

Blackstarting the North American power grid after a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event or major solar storm

The electric power grid is our most critical infrastructure. This key resource provides the energy required for all other infrastructures to function. In modern times, electricity has become necessary to sustain life. The power grid in the U.S. is a target for terrorists and is vulnerable to naturally-occurring events. Numerous assessments have been performed on the vulnerability of our national power grid to both manmade and natural events.1 Two significant wide-area threats against our power grid are solar storms and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks. Solar storms are naturally-occurring events that have the potential to create large-scale blackouts that could potentially affect more than 50% of the U.S. population.2 EMP attacks occur when nuclear weapons are detonated at high altitudes; although there is no threat of direct blast or radiation dangers to humans, EMP events can wreck power grids. Although numerous studies have been conducted on the effects of EMP events and solar storms on the U.S. power grid, little has been done to plan for restarting or “blackstarting” the power grid after such an event. If electricity from unaffected areas is not available, the blackstart process becomes much more challenging. The procedures required to blackstart the power grid following a wide area outage are very different from the procedures used to restart the power grid following the major but limited blackouts that have occurred to date such as the 2003 Northeast blackout. This document develops a starting point for blackstarting the U.S. power grid based on likely effects on critical infrastructures caused by solar storms and EMP events. Previous regional blackstarts were assessed to glean empirical information on aspects that could be extrapolated to a national blackstart contingenc

Global Risks 2015, 10th Edition.

The 2015 edition of the Global Risks report completes a decade of highlighting the most significant long-term risks worldwide, drawing on the perspectives of experts and global decision-makers. Over that time, analysis has moved from risk identification to thinking through risk interconnections and the potentially cascading effects that result. Taking this effort one step further, this year's report underscores potential causes as well as solutions to global risks. Not only do we set out a view on 28 global risks in the report's traditional categories (economic, environmental, societal, geopolitical and technological) but also we consider the drivers of those risks in the form of 13 trends. In addition, we have selected initiatives for addressing significant challenges, which we hope will inspire collaboration among business, government and civil society communitie

From business continuity to design of critical infrastructures: ensuring the proper resilience level to datacentres

Since a few years, companies that runs business critical applications are increasing their focus on their support infrastructures. Indeed, it is clearly useless to pursue higher systems reliability, when the infrastructure is vulnerable. Aim of this paper is to explore the value of business continuity within the scope of the design of resilient system. The publication of the fifth revision of ANSI/TIA/EIA 942 standard provides operation managers and risk managers with a framework to plan and design resilient infrastructures. It will be shown how to use the aforementioned standard to analyse the gap between the current and the desired resilience level of a system, and suggest the proper steps to reach it, accordingly to the business continuity requirements. This approach was adopted on the case of the power system infrastructure of a primary Italian Application Service Provider, granting 24/7 mission critical services to its customers

Disaster Preparedness and Recovery For Community Development Organizations

The purpose of this handbook is to provide community development organizations (CDOs) with basic information useful for the following:- Developing organizational continuity of operations plans.- Proactively assisting their communities with preparedness.- Pre-planning for recovery and actual disaster recovery.More detailed information on these topics can be obtained from Web sites referenced at the end of this document.Typically after disasters, the vast majority (80%) of the affected population is able to manage its own recovery. The remaining 20% will need special assistance that CDOs and nonprofit organizations are uniquely positioned to provide. The kinds of assistance victims need varies greatly based on the type of disaster or crisis that has occurred and on each individual household's particular circumstances.CDOs have aided their communities' recovery from disaster with counseling services such as foreclosure prevention, help with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Small Business Association (FEMA and SBA) process, disaster recovery case management, rehabilitation services, recovery fundraising, volunteer management, new construction management, assistance in development of economic recovery, temporary housing to disaster victims, funding for day care, providing meeting spaces for recovery planning, communication with clientele, mental health services and so on. CDOs have also worked with local government to create a recovery that is sustainable and creates a better community than prior to the disaster. CDOs have responded to the needs of their existing clientele as well as disaster victims who were not in need of the CDOs' services previously.In order for CDOs to be positioned to provide assistance they must still be operational after the storm has passed. The first section of this handbook is a workbook designed to assist CDOs with step-by-step development of an organizational business continuity plan (BCP).The second portion of this handbook lists steps that organizations can take to work with emergency management leaders in their communities to encourage individual households and communities to be better prepared for natural and man-made disasters.The third and fourth sections of this handbook address issues associated with recovery. There is a guide to pre-planning for recovery, a guide to developing a disaster recovery notebook and best practices, and considerations and opportunities for housing, economic and community recovery are suggested.A resources section is included to provide additional information on preparedness for and recovery from disasters

The Electromagnetic Threat to the US: Resilience Strategy Recommendations

The article of record as published may be located at https://doi.org/10.18278/jcip.3.2.10https://www.jcip1.org/the-electromagnetic-threat-to-the-us-recommendations-for-resilience-strategies.htmlThis work is based on a master’s thesis completed by the lead author: Samuel Averitt, “The Electromagnetic Threat To The United States: Recommendations For Consequence Management” (Monterey, CA, Naval Postgraduate School, 2021), https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/68695This article analyzes the threat of both electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) to various federal agencies and the civilian population of the United States. EMP/GMD events are classified as low-probability/high-impact events that have potential for catastrophic consequences to all levels of government as well as the country's civilian population. By reviewing current literature and conducting two thought experiments, we determined that specific critical infrastructure sectors and modern society are at substantial risk from the effects of these events. Some of the most serious consequences of a large-scale EMP/GMD include longterm power loss to large geographic regions, loss of modern medical services, and severe communication blackouts that could make recovery from these events extremely difficult. In an attempt to counteract and mitigate the risks of EMP/GMD events, resilience engineering concepts prescribe several recommendations that could be utilized by policymakers to mitigate the effects of EMP or GMD. Some of the recommendations include utilizing hardened micro-grid systems, fast tracking available black start options, and various changes to government agency organizations that would provide additional resilience and recovery to American critical infrastructure systems in the post-EMP/GMD environment

State of Arizona emergency response and recovery plan

tableOfContents: Introduction -- Basic plan -- Emergency support function annexes -- Support annexes -- Incident annexes -- General Informationabstract: The State Emergency Response and Recovery Plan (SERRP) is a guide to how the State of Arizona conducts all hazards response. It is built upon National Response Framework as a scalable, flexible, and adaptable coordinating structures to align key roles and responsibilities, linking all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. It is intended to capture specific authorities and best practices for managing incidents that range from the serious but purely local, to large-scale terrorist attacks or catastrophic natural disaster