A whole-system approach to resilience is a critical component in engineering

Covid-19 tested the resilience of the global community. In many countries, long-standing protocols, and procedures created to mitigate the interruption or loss of services proved insufficient or ineffective as the impacts wrought by the pandemic created new and extraordinary challenges.

During the pandemic, the rapid re-engineering of systems restored vital services, with many sectors and service providers accelerating the digital transformation of their operations. Engineers across the globe were among those who worked quickly within their organisations to help pivot operations, some switching their design and production capabilities to supply vital medical equipment. Global collaboration to design, manufacture and distribute billions of Covid vaccine doses, enabled and fast-tracked by technology, swung into action. Challenges and understanding of resilience and interdependencies across sectors were highlighted.

Substantial technical challenges remain today in making society resilient, as the dependency on digital technology increases year on year. Engineers have a vital part to play in helping to secure the solutions and mitigations which will be needed in the future.

Resilience is usually delivered through multiple systems and infrastructures, with risk assessment, risk management and response and recovery measures in place to cover a wide range of scenarios. But are the measures in place adequate? Are they tried and tested frequently enough?

We believe the answer is no.

Current measures and actions in place

The digital economy is entirely dependent on reliable electricity supplies. Conversely, electricity delivery is heavily dependent on digital technology, from domestic “smart meters” to controls for windfarms and ensuring the integrity of the national electricity and utility network. The interdependencies between sectors such as health, manufacturing and communications are such that failure in one can result in unexpected failure in another – and consideration of the interdependencies and resilience of a whole system is vital if we are to ensure the foundations of society are not built on sand.

In the UK, The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) is the UK government’s National Technical Authority for physical and personnel protective security. There are 13 national infrastructure sectors: chemicals, civil nuclear, communications, defence, emergency services, energy, finance, food, government, health, space, transport and water.

The National Risk Register is the public-facing version of the classified cross-government and scientifically rigorous National Security Risk Assessment. Co-ordinated by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) and published in December 2020, it assesses the impact of a range of risks that may directly affect the UK in the next two years. National power loss is one of the highest-impact events noted.

In the past, the potential for national power disruption (often called a “black start”) was believed to be around two days in the worst-case scenario. The last National Risk Register suggests plans are needed for up to seven days. Steps are now being taken to ensure that plans are physically in place and tested to ameliorate the worst disruption.

A new government-driven performance standard requires the Electricity System Operator (ESO) to have sufficient capability and arrangements in place to restore 100 per cent of the UK’s electricity demand within five days. This will be implemented regionally, with an interim target of 60 per cent of regional demand to be restored within 24 hours to ensure essential services are resumed as quickly as possible. The ESO must ensure that everything is in place to comply with this standard by no later than 31 December 2026.

Such a government standard ensures that regulatory processes accommodate the economic costs of achieving this target as a national requirement, over and above the regulatory remit.

In practice, a substantial level of engineering and technical work is required to reduce the risk to this level, given the increasing changes seen in the electricity sector as the penetration of low-carbon sources has increased and older generation sources have been retired.

A draft National Resilience Strategy², issued for consultation by the Cabinet Office in July 2021, set out the overarching vision to make the UK the most resilient nation. Still, there remains considerable work to achieve this.

It requires an unprecedented, integrated and interdisciplinary response from the UK and global engineering community, across all sectors such as power, telecommunications, water, health and manufacturing, given the deepening and increasing interdependence of businesses and sectors.

Society generally is less and less resilient to the disruption of any services. For instance, in the past most domestic properties had internal water storage, phones were hard-wired, and telecoms infrastructure was physically separate, with little dependency on communications over the internet. Hospitals had paper records, and the interdependencies of technical and medical advances were limited.

The interdependence of systems and penetration of the digital economy across sectors has created significant complexity and reliance on digital solutions.

These complexities achieve efficiency, but often at the expense of resilience. In manufacturing and other sectors, “just in time” produces efficiency, but often at the cost of “just in case”, and as recent events have shown, the balance may need to be adjusted.

A whole-system approach is needed

To understand the trade-offs as we move forward, engineers – and businesses and sectors – will have to adopt a whole system approach beyond individual sectors, which is increasingly important as the digital economy extends.