Crisis scenarios remain theoretical until you experience them yourself, and when that happens you can learn a lot in a short time. About how such an event affects daily life and disrupts society. Sjors Fröhlich experienced it and immediately made a translation in his mind to his own municipality: "What if such an extensive and prolonged power failure hits the Netherlands? Are we ready for it then? Is my municipality ready?' Plenty of material for inspiration for his keynote lecture during eRIC.
Chain reaction
Fröhlich: "What the power failure in Spain and Portugal last spring showed is that such a scenario is by no means unthinkable. The event also showed how broad is the spectrum of potential causes that can cause failure of vital facilities. It can arise from a hybrid or cyber attack or extreme weather that destroys energy infrastructure, but also from a technical failure, as in this case. The power outage made clear how complex energy networks are and that an incident at one spot in the network can cause a chain reaction that puts large areas without power."
A second learning point, according to Fröhlich, is the enormous dependence of today's society on electricity. "Because nothing works the way we are used to anymore. In stores you can no longer checkout, because cash registers and ATMs no longer work, and automatic sliding doors also no longer open or close, I discovered in stores and hotels. At first I thought it was a local outage caused by excavation work on the street where I was shopping at the time. But as the day progressed, the extent of the outage became clear and more and more processes became disrupted. It caused anxiety and uncertainty for many people."
Campaign
With a large-scale and prolonged power outage, two crisis scenarios actually unfold simultaneously. For although power outages and a major cyber failure are named as two different crisis types in national and regional crisis plans, one automatically leads to the other; after all, data centers and the digital highway with its hundreds of thousands of routers and switches cannot do without power either. And the longer such a disruption lasts, the greater the social effects will become, because logistics chains also depend on power as well as data to supply the Netherlands.
"This is why the recently launched new 'Think Ahead Campaign' is very important," Fröhlich emphasizes. "Roughly five years ago, these scenarios were not really taken seriously in society, due to the great trust in our vital infrastructure. The same goes for other crisis situations, by the way, including the threat of international armed conflict. But the world has really changed and everyone needs to prepare: government, business and citizens."
"experiences show that people can also act irrationally during a crisis or disruption." - Sjors Fröhlich
In his own municipality, Fröhlich was already recording a local video message to get citizens and businesses in Vijfheerenlanden into crisis preparedness mode. Fröhlich continued: "As an administrator, I want to stress to everyone the importance of making a good emergency plan for one's own home and work situation and putting together an emergency kit to provide the most necessary necessities of life for a few days. That video was not yet finished, but after my experiences in Spain, I pushed hard to finish it. Having a crisis experience of my own is very stimulating, I must say. And now this outage only lasted one day, because by the end of the day large areas had electricity again. But if it lasts 72 hours or longer, the timeframe we are focusing on with our Dutch campaign, we really have to pull out all the stops to keep society running and help vulnerable people."
Stress test
Citizens must therefore urgently set to work to make their households crisis-proof and the same applies to the business community, healthcare and not least the security domain: the services on which society relies, especially in times of crisis. But they cannot provide help everywhere at once, so true resilience must come from thorough preparation. Does Fröhlich see other tasks to strengthen resilience?
"I think it would be good to do a social 'stress test' at various levels. If it is known that digital POS systems and POS terminals fail in stores, will stores still be able to settle with cash? The call to citizens is to have enough cash on hand for situations when the Internet and ATMs don't work, but if you can't checkout with cash then, what should you do? Furthermore, I think it's important for logistics to be set up so that people don't have to panic because certain products are out of stock. Think of the huge run on toilet paper in the corona crisis, when there was never a shortage of toilet paper. And recently in the drinking water crisis in Utrecht, the simple advice from drinking water company Vitens was to boil water. That was sufficient, but there was such a rush for bottled water in supermarkets that no bottle of water was available in many supermarkets for days. Such experiences show that people can also act irrationally when faced with a crisis or disruption. The task is that, based on good preparation and with sufficient emergency supplies in the home, people do not go into panic and hoarding mode and can assure themselves that they can ride out a crisis of a few days without worry."
Want to know more? Visit Sjors Fröhlich's lecture during eRIC on April 22, Twenthe Airport, in lecture hall 2.
