Are we overly dependent on Electricity — especially during Disasters?
Originally published by Barton Dunant in "Medium", on July 1, 2021.
The world at large — including the world of Emergency Management (EM) — is heavily reliant on electricity and technology. EM’s use of Communications and Information Technology (IT) systems are also heavily reliant on electricity. Access to a continuous source of electricity (Sustainable Electrical Grid, Sufficient backup power, etc.) has become the keystone Essential Element of Information. Without electricity, fairly quickly all other infrastructures will fail. Each infrastructure element has dependencies on the other — and this is important to Emergency Management in that Mission Essential Functions are linked to infrastructure elements.
Deltares, a water/environmental and infrastructure consultant from the Netherlands produced this interdependency graphic, which is part of a report they made on Hurricane Harvey:
There is no infrastructure sector that is not connected somehow to the use of electricity and technology. EM in the United States must support all of these during Response and Recovery, through the national and state’s/territorial/tribal entity’s Mission Essential Functions. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has Energy (Power Grid, Fuel) as one of its seven Community Lifelines, which are monitored as key situational awareness metrics for maintenance and restoration during a Response (Communications is another Community Lifeline) (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2020). FEMA recognized that these Community Lifelines are crucial for situational awareness and assistance actions by the Federal Government in support of states and local jurisdictions for Response and Recovery. Tools that EM uses — Communications Equipment, Resource Request Software, Geospatial Information Systems, etc. — all rely on electricity.
The Cascading Impact of a Disruption and its Impact on Response
As previously noted, when electricity fails, other systems quickly fail as well. And that can start to cascade with the electrical grid itself. Kinney et al. estimate that the loss of a single sub-station can result in a triggering of a cascade in the network, causing an overall loss of 25% of transmission efficiency (Kenney et al., 2005). The February 2021 winter storm in Texas demonstrated both the cascading infrastructure impacts (electric valves on gas pipelines failed, then the gas lines froze; lack of heat in buildings caused water pipes to burst, etc.); and also demonstrated the lack of interdependency and redundancy in the overall U.S. electrical grid — especially in most of Texas which is its own Interconnection — and not connected to the other two national Interconnections (Henson, 2021). No infrastructure sector is immune. Shipping requires ports with electricity, roadways have traffic signals powered by electricity. Drinking water and wastewater systems require electricity (and IT) for filtration and pumping systems. EM has to prioritize the restoration of systems during Response — and sometimes the choices are near impossible to prioritize and implement (where to send the last available generator — to the hospital, shelter, 911 center or sewage treatment plant?). Resiliency can be obtained by: not relying on a single-point-of-failure system; having redundancies in workflow processes (including more than one that does not require primary electrical power sourcing); and continuous testing of these systems and the people that need to use them. EM should know that all of their Mission Essential Functions are dependent (and interdependent) on power, the internet and telecommunications.
Resiliency is possible
The best way to support resiliency for EM when power, internet and telecommunications become unavailable is to follow the Planning, Organization, Equipment, Training and Exercising (POETE) model from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) and Stakeholder Preparedness Review (SPR) Guide (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2018). For each of these critical infrastructure elements/Community Lifelines (individually and in combination with the others) plan for alternative sources (of power, information, communications, etc.); organize staff in support of continued operations — under business continuity constraints and those who will focus on restoring capabilities; identify and regularly test the equipment used for alternate work; train for these types of contingencies, including knowing what life safety actions need to be taken initially when there are no communications from command; and finally conduct exercises that test those plans in action.
There is already guidance and policy at the U.S. Federal level for this. The U.S. Department of Energy is the lead federal agency for Emergency Support Function (ESF) #12 — Energy, which has as its main focus the continuity and restoration of the country’s energy infrastructure (U.S. Department of Energy, n.d.). The group within the U.S. Department of Energy that supports ESF #12 (the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response) is also part of the Cyber Unified Coordination Group, per Presidential Policy Directive 41 (PPD-41) which provides federal support for cyber incidents (The White House, 2016) as well as energy security and resilience incidents which are part of PPD-21 — Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience (The White House, 2013).
There also needs to be an interdependency analysis and “cross-walking” between critical infrastructure elements (i.e., Community Lifelines such as Energy and Communications). Breor noted this should be done in both a top-down and bottom-up approach (Breor, 2018):
Breor, an official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Infrastructure Preparedness (DHS-IP), also noted that this dual approach (top-down and bottom-up) for interdependence resiliency needs to include the private sector, on a voluntary non-regulatory basis as well. In 2009, DHS-IP created a Regional Resiliency Assessment Program to assess the significant infrastructure and promote better cooperation, coordination, communication and collaboration among public and private sector partners, with the goal of increasing regional critical infrastructure resiliency (Breor, 2018).
Conclusion
Resiliency for EM can be obtained when power, internet and telecommunications become unavailable, through the planning, organizing, equipping, training and exercising of the mission critical elements needed to support Energy and Cyber Infrastructures. Recognizing that all of the Infrastructure sectors are interdependent — and wholly dependent on Energy, is critical as well.
Emergency Management leaders need to think outside of their jurisdictional “box” for resources and partnerships to support — first and foremost — their continuity of operations/government — and to include the standing orders for workforce life safety as paramount. While Emergency Management can be performed without electricity, information technology or even most infrastructure elements, it cannot be performed without its people.
References
Breor, S. (2018). Assessing critical infrastructure dependencies and interdependences. WSC ’18, 1–9. https://www.informs-sim.org/wsc18papers/includes/files/001.pdf
Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2020, July 27). Community lifelines. https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/lifelines
Henson, B. (2021, February 17). Why the power is out in Texas… and why other states are vulnerable too. Yale Climate Connections. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/why-the-power-is-out-in-texas-and-whyother-states-are-vulnerable-too/
Kinney, R., Crucitti, P., Albert, R., & Latora, V. (2005). Modeling cascading failures in the North American power grid. The European Physical Journal B — Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 46(1), 101–107. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00237-9
Sebastian, A., Lendering, K., Kothuis, B., Brand, A. Jonkman, S., van Gelder, P., Godfroij, M., Kolen, B., Comes, M., Lhermitte, S., Meesters, K., van de Walle, B., Ebrahimi Fard, A., Cunningham, S. Khakzad, N., Nespeca, V. (2017). Hurricane Harvey report: A factfinding effort in the direct aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in the Greater Houston Region. Delft University Publishers. https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:54c24519-c366–4f2f-a3b9–0807db26f69c?collection=research
The White House. (2013, February 12). Presidential policy directive — Critical infrastructure security and resilience. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-pressoffice/2013/02/12/presidential-policy-directive-critical-infrastructure-security-and-resil
The White House. (2016, July 26). Presidential policy directive — United States cyber incident coordination. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-pressoffice/2016/07/26/presidential-policy-directive-united-states-cyber-incident
U.S. Department of Energy. (n.d.), Emergency Support Function #12. Office of Electricity. https://www.energy.gov/oe/emergency-support-function-12
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2018, May). Threat and hazard identification and risk assessment (THIRA) and stakeholder preparedness review (SPR) guide: Comprehensive preparedness guide (CPG) 201 3rd edition. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/CPG201Final20180525.pdf