EMPOWERING BUSINESS TO DRIVE IMPROVED RESILIENCE OUTCOMES RESILIENCE There is a need to increase understanding at a national, regional and local level of the resilience of our infrastructure networks, especially understanding criticality and key pinchpoints/bottlenecks. There is a need to increase the sophistication of how we think about resilience, shifting beyond a narrow focus on shock events or infrastructure failure and thinking more about interdependencies, levels of service and community preparedness. A longer-term view needs to be taken with increased focus on adapting to slower changes over time, including climate change. Resilience relates to all the long-term and systemic challenges to be addressed: Summary of the nine long-term and systemic challenges to be addressed Vision Economy Regional integration and collaboration Data and asset management Resilience: Understanding of criticality and key pinchpoints/bottlenecks. Shift to interdependencies, levels of service and community preparedness. Longer-term view, increased focus on adapting to slower changes over time eg.climate change Governance and tools Demand management Regulations / standards Funding and procurement THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT Physical infrastructure directly contributes to improved living standards and well-being for New Zealanders. Given New Zealand s dependence on international connectivity, it is necessary to ensure a high level of integration with international, national and regional initiatives aimed at increasing infrastructure resilience, as well as integrating the many interrelated and parallel initiatives at the project and programme level. The National Infrastructure Unit s work programme outlines the key attributes of resilience, integrates infrastructure resilience into national and global resilience initiatives, establishes resilience toolkit/s, IN-CONFIDENCE 1
and seeks to embed resilience into common practice to achieve direct and substantial benefits for New Zealanders. Infrastructure fails. Increased resilience is not necessarily about making things stronger or investing more, and is quite often achieved by operational changes. Resilience applies to emergent events as well as shock events. Resilience encompasses dealing with natural, socio-natural and technological hazards. ATTRIBUTES OF RESILIENCE The attributes of resilience which will continue to be developed and promoted are: Service Delivery - Focus on national, business and community needs in the immediate and longer term Adaptation - National infrastructure has capacity to withstand disruption, absorb disturbance, act effectively in a crisis, and recognises changing conditions over time Community Preparedness - Infrastructure providers and users understand the infrastructure outage risks they face and take steps to mitigate these. Aspects of timing, duration, regularity, intensity, and impact tolerance differ over time and between communities Responsibility - Individual and collaborative responsibilities are clear between owners, operators, users, policy-makers and regulators. Responsibility gaps are addressed Interdependencies - A systems approach applies to identification and management of risk (including consideration of interdependencies, supply chain and weakest link vulnerabilities Financial Strength - Financial capacity to deal with investment, significant disruption and changing circumstances Continuous - On-going resilience activities provide assurance and draws attention to emerging issues, recognising that infrastructure resilience will always be a work in progress Organisational Performance - Leadership and culture are conducive to resilience, including: Leadership & Culture, Networks & Change Ready. Future skills requirements are being addressed The primary components of the 2015/16 National Infrastructure Unit work programme will be to: Drive conversations between users (communities) and infrastructure providers Activate business enterprises as representative users of infrastructure services IN-CONFIDENCE 2
Work with business and community leaders Participate in specific projects Communicate exemplars of good practice EXPERIENCE TO DATE In advancing infrastructure resilience the following observations are being made: Slow rate of uptake Dealing with systems of systems, complex Confirmation that standards and regulations contribute strongly but can at best provide only part of the solution Confirmation that measuring resilience should not be the priority. Conversations and narratives are more revealing Infrastructure service providers are (in general) giving insufficient attention to CDEM Act responsibilities ie. Lifelines Interdependencies are extremely important and current efforts are insufficient. We have no evidence to prioritise across infrastructure. These observations help identify target areas for resilience improvement and priorities for 2015/16. IMPROVED RESILIENCE IN-CONFIDENCE 3
BUSINESS CONTINUITY Business continuity is a key component of national resilience and forms part of the infrastructure resilience toolkit under development. Government agencies belong to the government business continuity forum and each agency has programmes in place to actively apply business continuity best practice. The private sector applies business continuity practices and many belong to the Business Continuity Institute. Business continuity and the organisational resilience of businesses during and post the Christchurch earthquakes has been the subject of considerable research (for example, www.resorgs.org.nz ). Business continuity is actively promoted through agencies such as the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and through collaborative ventures such as Economic Development Agencies New Zealand. PRACTICAL ASSISTANCE TO BUSINESSES Practical guides to assist business in assessing their vulnerabilities to infrastructure services are under development. This is an example prepared as Business Advice to Building Occupiers (per Brunsdon, Seville and Hare): Understand the wider context of your building & key activities Owner/tenant, one or more buildings, geographic spread, neighbourhood, access routes, infrastructure Look hard at what your building is used for and how disruptive if not available Look at how each building is used, how time critical are the operations Life safety performance compared with serviceability performance Life-safety risks, functionality post event/s, how long to repair Prioritise effort and investment Think about your buildings resilience as an investment rather than a compliance decision Consider resilience from multiple perspectives Not only structural, not only earthquakes, fixtures, services, infrastructure Plan for the unthinkable Consider people, premises, processes, technology. Engage with occupiers Tenancy agreement Owner/tenant roles and responsibilities Your risks are my risks Communities Don t rely on insurance to put things right Insurance may not bring back customers!! Brief consultants on big picture considerations Understanding and appreciation of matters above IN-CONFIDENCE 4
The intent is to extend this to also include energy, telecommunications, water and transport (including port and airport) services. In addition, specific attention will be given to: Geospatial location based information Cyber security is of increasing concern Lifelines the contribution of infrastructure owners and operators The Infrastructure Forum presents an ideal opportunity to communicate the direction being taken to improve infrastructure resilience, the opportunity to identify gaps and to actively advance the topic. The National Infrastructure Unit would like to invite attendees to listen to a short presentation and to participate in an active discussion to explore the opportunities. ends IN-CONFIDENCE 5