The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has urged the UK Government to establish clear standards of resilience for the digital and telecommunications, energy, transport and water sectors by 2025, in a bid to protect the economy from climate change, extreme weather and cyber-attacks.
Prof Jim Hall, Lead for the Oxford Programme for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (OPSIS), at the ECI, and also Commissioner of NIC, said:
With billions of pounds due to be spent over the next 20 years on new infrastructure to create a greener, more productive economy, the time is right for government to set out its expectations of operators in the face of growing resilience threats.
Failing to do so will cost us all more in the long run, as expensive emergency measures have to be introduced to address service failures that could have been avoided by planned investment.
None of us can expect every service to be 100 per cent reliable in the face of big shocks to the system, but we should at least know what we can reasonably expect from different utilities when extreme events occur. That allows us as individuals – as well as other impacted infrastructure sectors – to plan for different eventualities.”
Climate change and related weather extremes, alongside a heightened reliance on digital technologies, mean that the UK faces increased risks of vital networks and services being unavailable for extended periods, argues the report.
Setting standards which operators have a duty to meet will enable the public to understand what level of service they can expect when incidents occur, says the Commission, while clear standards will enable infrastructure operators to plan and invest for the future.
Read the NIC announcement on the Commission’s website.
Read the full NIC report: Developing resilience standards in UK infrastructure
Read Prof Hall's blog: Setting the standards of national infrastructure resilience