#17,595
Since 2008 the UK government has produced, and updated every two years, a National Risk Register For Civil Emergencies – essentially a short list of disaster scenarios (man-made & natural) that the Cabinet Office believe to be the UK's biggest threats.
I've covered many of these scenarios from a North American perspective in this blog, including:
FEMA: Preparing the Nation for Space Weather Events
FEMA National Risk Index For Natural Disasters
NIAC: Surviving A Catastrophic Power Outage
DHS: NIAC Cyber Threat Report - August 2017
FEMA: Cascadia Rising 2016
All reasons why individual and community preparedness are frequent topics of discussion in these pages (see here, here, here, and here).
This year the UK's NRR runs 192 pages, and covers far more territory than previous editions. Although some of the risks are UK-centric, many (like pandemics, cyber attacks, severe space weather, and grid failures,etc.) can strike anywhere and without warning.
The document's introduction describes it as:
The National Risk Register (NRR) is the external version of the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA), which is the government’s assessment of the most serious risks facing the UK.
The UK faces a broad and diverse range of risks, including threats to lives, health, society, critical infrastructure, economy and sovereignty. Risks may be non-malicious, such as accidents or natural hazards, or they may be malicious threats from malign actors who seek to do us harm.
The risks that meet the threshold for inclusion in the NRR would have a substantial impact on the UK’s safety, security and/or critical systems at a national level. The NRR includes information about 89 risks, within 9 risk themes – although several risks could be categorised under more than one theme. These are:
• Terrorism• Cyber• State threats• Geographic and diplomatic• Accidents and systems failures• Natural and environmental hazards• Human, animal and plant health• Societal• Conflict and instability
The NRR assesses the likelihood and impact for each risk, following a rigorous and well-tested methodology (see Chapter 2). Risks can manifest in different ways, with different levels of severity. To ensure the UK is prepared for a broad range of scenarios, the NRR sets out a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ for each risk. These scenarios are not a prediction of what is most likely to happen, instead they represent the worst plausible manifestation of that particular risk (once highly unlikely variations have been discounted). This enables relevant bodies to undertake proportionate planning. The NRR includes information on the capabilities required to respond to and recover from the emergency, should the risk materialise.
With nearly 200 pages, and covering 89 specific risks, it would be impossible to summarize this document properly, so many will want to download and read it in its entirety. However, I've included a few excerpts from a couple of `high profile' and `high impact' scenarios below,
While severe space weather can occur anytime, it is most likely to occur during times of Solar Maximum, which will peak its (roughly) 11-year cycle in 2025.
The UK risk assessment is there is a 5-25% chance of seeing such an event over the next couple of years, and that its impact would be `significant'. The scenario they use is not the `worst case', but rather one based on the 1859 Carrington event.
Severe space weather
The term ‘space weather’ describes a series of phenomena originating from the sun, which include solar flares, solar energetic particles and coronal mass ejections. Day-to-day space weather causes little more than the Aurora Borealis in polar regions, but strong space weather events can bring disruption to many vital technologies. Orbiting satellites are particularly vulnerable to space weather effects, and can be damaged or temporarily disabled.
Scenario
The reasonable worst-case scenario for this risk is based on a severe space weather event, approximately the same scale and magnitude as the Carrington Storm of 1859, lasting for 1-2 weeks. It includes a number of different solar phenomena including coronal mass ejections, solar flares, solar radiation storms and solar radio bursts. Each phenomenon would likely occur several times during a 2-week period, with each varying in magnitude, temporal and spatial extent.
Impacts may include regional power disruptions, loss or disruption of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (for example Global Positioning System (GPS)) and some telecommunications (for example satellite communications and highfrequency radio), disruption to aviation, an increase in background radiation doses at high altitudes and in space, and possible disruption to ground-based digital components. The catalogue of tracked objects on orbit would be significantly impacted, raising the risk of on-orbit collisions. There may also be second order impacts such as fatalities and casualties (for example, in the event of power disruptions).
(SNIP)
Recovery
Loss of power due to safety system trips in urban areas could be recovered in a matter of hours. In the event of electricity transformers needing to be replaced in remote coastal areas, recovery could take several months based upon current replacement transformer availability. Loss of, or disruption to, satellite based services and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (for example GPS) has a recovery time of several days, with a small number of satellites non-recoverable. It could take weeks for flight schedules (especially long-haul carriers) to fully return to normal. The catalogue of tracked objects on-orbit (satellites and debris) could similarly take weeks to re-establish, with this temporarily raising the risk of collisions
And of course, another pandemic is considered inevitable, although the timing is unknown. Once again, the likelihood of happening over the next few years is given as 5-25%, and the impact could be `catastrophic'.
A`reasonable worst-case' scenario is used (similar to 1918), but a novel virus like MERS-CoV, or H5N1, could prove more problematic.
Pandemic
Scenario
The reasonable worst-case scenario is based on an unmitigated respiratory pandemic with an unassumed transmission route and a high attack rate, with 4% of symptomatic infections requiring hospital care and a case fatality ratio of 2.5%. From start to finish the emergency stage of the pandemic in the UK will last at least 9 months and potentially significantly longer.
Response mechanisms are likely to be required beyond 9 months to manage the chronic stage of the risk and longer-term recovery. The pandemic may come in single or multiple waves. The wave number depends on the characteristics of the disease, public behaviour, and government intervention. The pandemic may lead to behaviour changes in the population depending on the nature of the disease and the government’s response.
The scenario assumes 50% of the UK’s population fall ill during the whole course of the pandemic, with about 1.34 million people estimated to require hospital treatment, possibly resulting in up to 840,000 deaths.
Key assumptions for this scenario
Each pandemic is unique and will be impossible to predict when it will occur. Impacts on society depend on many different factors – transmission route, the time of year it emerges, severity of disease, global travel, who gets ill or dies and where it happens. For the purposes of the assessment, the scenario is an unmitigated pandemic that does not make any assumptions about behaviour change or government interventions being successful at reducing transmission.
Variations
Variations of the reasonable worst-case scenario for the pandemic risk, which is based on an influenza-like illness, are based on different pathogens, some of which have different routes of transmission. These include a possible novel enterovirus pandemic (these viruses are usually mild, but if they infect the central nervous system, they can cause serious illness); a novel coronavirus pandemic; and, a novel sexually transmitted infection pandemic.
While the UK doesn't promote individual and family preparedness as actively as FEMA does here in the United States, this document does list some of preparedness steps people might consider taking before the next crisis hits.
Some examples of actions that could be suggested to individuals include:
• Signing up for first aid training – courses can provide useful, potentially lifesaving, skills that can be helpful in a variety of emergency situations.
• Teaching children about how and when to call the emergency services.
• Speaking to their child’s school to find out their procedures in the event of different emergency scenarios.
• Storing important documents (for example, insurance documents and key contact numbers) and important items (for example, medication and identification) in an easily accessible location in case of emergency or an evacuation at short notice (and not attempting to retrieve these items if it becomes dangerous to do so).
• Keeping some basic supplies at home such as bottled water, a torch and batteries (which is safer than candles), and a wind-up radio to get updates during a power cut.
• Knowing how to turn off gas, water and electricity in the home.
• Checking the right insurance is in place for home or business (for example, flood insurance) or travel insurance when planning a trip.
• Finding out about evacuation procedures in the workplace.
• Reading official advice on what to do in a marauding terrorist attack or how to report suspicious packages or behaviour.
• Reading advice about on how to stay secure online.
• Joining a community group or social club that is active in emergency preparedness.
• Signing up to the local authority or local utilities provider’s vulnerable customer schemes and priority services (if eligible).
• Being aware of the UK Government’s Emergency Alerts service and being prepared to inform others in their local area who may not have received or seen an emergency alert, in the event one is sent.
Depending on local risk assessments, individual circumstances or current events, more specific activities may be appropriate.
All in all, the NRR is recommended reading for anyone who would like to better understand the growing array of risks that face our modern society.
And a reminder that September is National Preparedness Month here in the U.S., and as I do every year, I'll be featuring a long list of new, or updated, preparedness blogs.
