Breakfast briefing: Early findings from EARTH EX 2019 – Working together to secure our world

EARTH EX III//19 is a multi-player exercise, now in its third year, on resilience planning for a ‘Black Sky’-class complex catastrophe. It takes participants through a developing scenario where the power grid is knocked out completely for days or weeks. Whether organisations or individuals, they must consider together each evolution of the situation and their options, to then make choices on actions and next steps. 

Our infrastructure is interconnected and interdependent. A major incident in one location can cascade rapidly and have an impact on critical infrastructure systems elsewhere, affecting their ability to function, to connect communities, provide essential services, or to protect society. The impact of a major loss of electricity supply would rapidly expand into water, communications, food supply, finance, and beyond. These can be caused by natural hazards, such as extreme terrestrial weather – storms, floods, fires – but also critical seismic zones or extreme space weather such as solar flares. Malign attacks could also be a cause – cyber-attacks, terrorist attacks on the grid, or an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

Our partner the Resilience Shift has, in collaboration with the Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council, invited corporations and citizens worldwide to put this scenario to the test through EARTH EX III//19. This exercise is a powerful way to understand what a lack of resilience means in a real-world scenario for businesses and for individuals, and reviews best practices that can help organisations build interconnected resilience planning to sustain our future.

Chair:

Lord Toby Harris, UK representative of the EIS Council and Resilience First Board member

Key insights:

Craig Dyke, Head of Network Competition, National Grid ESO

Speakers: 

Avi Schnurr, CEO and President of the EIS Council
Xavier Aldea Borruel, Programme Manager, Resilience Shift
Dr Juliet Mian, Technical Director, Resilience Shift (TBC)

Speakers will review key lessons-learned from the exercise. How resilient is your organisation for a major power outage? How well prepared is our society? Are you and your family ready for the impact of a Black Sky event? I do hope you will be able to attend this fascinating briefing to find out more.

Ahead of the presentation and discussion on the report findings, we are pleased to announce that we will also hear from National Grid ESO on key insights following the power outage in August.

Kindly hosted by FTI Consulting