Earthquake Risk and US Highway Infrastructure

Thanks to our friends at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) a recent Congressional Research Service report entitled Earthquake Risk and U.S. Highway Infrastructure: Frequently Asked Questions was posted.  This 11-page report is an excellent overview of the current state of natural and man-made (read - "Fracking") earthquake impact on the US highway system.

Two figures in the report are very telling as to the concentration of earthquakes and implications on "Shaking expected for Tall Structures Like Bridges" (below)...

as well as a graphic showing the chance of human-induced and natural earthquakes.  (Look at the concentration around Oklahoma presumably due to Fracking.)

Key Comments in the Report

The report approaches these issues in a FAQ approach...so, here are some quick highlights:

Q:  What Are the Components of Seismic Risk?

A:  Seismic risk to a highway system is determined by three factors:

• Likelihood of seismic events of varying magnitudes, and related physical events, often referred to as the hazard;
• Vulnerability of highway structures to damage from such events; and
• Potential consequences of that vulnerability (e.g., lives lost, economic disruption, etc.)

Q: How Vulnerable Is the U.S. Highway System?

A:  "No national database exists on the seismic design and retrofit status of highway system components; thus, a perspective on vulnerability at the national level is unavailable.  However, many states with large seismic hazards have compiled data on the vulnerability of highway components within their borders..."

Q:  How Vulnerable are Highway Bridges?

A: Basically many of the most vulnerable older bridges -- particularly in the West Coast States -- have been retrofitted to improve seismic resilience; however, many older bridges (around 13,000) in the New Madrid seismic zone (AR, IL, IN, KY, MO, MS, TN) have not been retrofitted.

Q: How Costly is Retrofitting Highway Infrastructure?

A:  Because no national data exist on the status of retrofitting existing highway bridges or other infrastructure (e.g.,tunnels, highway systems), no national estimates exist.  

Conclusion

If you are involved in transportation policy or a student of infrastructure, this is a useful starting point to give you a sense of the daunting task of improving the resilience of highway structures against earthquakes.

Mr. Gisli Olafsson -- A True and Proven Crisis Leader

I am currently a student in the University of Washington Masters of Infrastructure Planning and Management (IPM) program.  This quarter I am taking IPM501, Comprehensive Emergency Management.  As part of this course one of our required readings is an excellent crisis leadership book by Mr. Gisli Olafsson entitled The Crisis Leader.

We were very fortunate to "virtually meet" Mr. Olafsson on an Adobe Connect lecture on July 29th where Mr. Olafsson took 90 minutes to highlight his experiences as an urban search and rescue leader including his experience as a team leader for Iceland's International Urban Search and Rescue team (ICE-SAR) immediately after the tragic earthquake hit Haiti in 2010.

Overall, Mr. Olafsson is a very compelling and experienced emergency response manager and leader with some excellent -- albeit tragic -- stories from his experiences responding to disasters around the world.  In his lecture he raised some excellent comments and ideas about the role of leadership during a crisis.  Some of the key ideas and comments he raised are captured below:

CL = Y + T + R

The equation above is one way Mr. Olafsson tried to explain what crisis leadership includes and entails.  The terms are first interpreted as:

CL = Crisis Leadership

Y = You

T = Team

R = Response

In summary he used this equation as a way to help capture some key aspects of personal leadership.

Y = You

You need to know yourself -- you need to know how you react under times of stress and crisis and how you deal with events -- including those events with substantial amounts of death and destruction.  You need to understand your emotions, fears and how to deal with these psychological arrows so you can be an effective leader.

Mr. Olafsson pointed out that key to the "You" aspect is to realize that you need to trust your team and their capabilities in order to control and even block your fear.  You need to be prepared for the task at hand by knowing your own strengths and weaknesses.  You also need to be physically and psychologically fit to endure the long hours and stressful conditions.

T = Team

Paramount elements for leadership success includes being resilient (also referred to as "Semper Gumby" as a reference to the very flexible cartoon character).  Secondly, you need to always be preparing through planning and exercising.. 

Mr. Olafsson noted that as a rule of thumb from a World Bank document on Natural Hazards Unnatural Disasters that for every hour or preparation spent you can expect to save six hours of effort; similarly for every dollar spent you can expect to save six dollars.

You want to build your team so that you are a "...leader of leaders..." where the team members are empowered to not only do their job but also to fill the role as a leader as required for the situation and based on their technical specialties/expertise.  Don't be a micromanager but lead your "leaders" so they are effective and the job gets done.

R = Respond

Response to a crisis is a key reason why you are at the disaster.  But, you are surrounded by many challenges ranging from the disaster itself to the weather to the debris field to the emotional survivors and even to the smell.  First you need to focus -- block the external stimuli and do your task at hand.  Secondly, take advantage of the intelligence and help that can be provided by the local population affected by the disaster.  Apparently FEMA in the U.S. refers to this concept as "Survivor-centric Response."

Responding requires a team with solid morale.  As noted in Chapter 25, "Team Morale," Mr. Olafsson states, "No matter which way it starts out , one of your crucial roles as a leader is to ensure that you keep morale high, even during the most difficult times.  Your ability to do that depends on a number of things including:

• Your rapport with team members...
• Your ability to read others...
• Your ability to understand how the situation is affecting people..."

Conclusion

If you are a leader of any sort -- but especially one placed -- or potentially placed -- into an emergency situation or worse yet a disaster, I would highly recommend you take time to read, digest and contemplate the excellent and field-proven advice offered in this book by Mr. Olafsson.  As a 40+ year leader myself, I found his advice to be "...right on..." and useful for my professional and personal leadership roles.

Mr. Olafsson's website is:  www.thecrisisleader.com and he can be followed on Twitter @gislio

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2014 World Economic Forum Risk Report - High and Low Lights...

Each year I look forward to reading the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Risk Report.  The WEF has been publishing these very compelling reports for the past 9 years.  The 2014 Risk Report was published on December 31, 203 and can be found at this LINK.

This year's report maps 31 global risks according to the level of concern, likelihood and impact, and interconnections among them.  Of these risks they identify the Top 10 Risks of Highest Concern and they have also included a fascinating discussion on what they call "Digital Disintegration" which examines cyberspace and its future for the globe.

The graphic below shows the 31 global risks and their categories including how the Top 10 Risks are detailed.

Infrastructure Risks

Of course as I look at the 31 risks, I am very interested in the "critical infrastructure-centric" issues that the WEF survey participants highlighted.  My own personal "Top 10" list includes the following from the list of 31:

• Economic: Failure/shortfall of critical infrastructure
• Environmental:  Greater incidence of extreme weather events
• Environmental:  Greater incidence of natural catastrophes
• Environmental:  Greater incidence of  man-made environmental catastrophes
• Environmental:  Water Crises
• Geopolitical:  Large-scale terrorist attack
• Societal:  Mismanaged urbanization (inadequate infrastructure and supply chains)
• Technological:  Breakdown of critical information infrastructure and networks
• Technological:  Escalation of large-scale cyber attacks
• Technological:  Massive incident of data fraud/theft

Risks in Terms of Likelihood and Impact

On page 17 of this 60-page report there are two tables showing the evolving global risk landscape from 2007 to 2014 based on the World Economic Forum Global Risk Reports.  The referenced table shows a fascinating movement of risk likelihood and impact moving from economic/technological issues to more geopolitical and environmental issues.  Comparisons are shown in the graphic below:

I've starred the two of concern for both likelihood and impact -- that is in the area of cyber -- both attacks and information infrastructure breakdown.  So, in spite of the list of 31 and the top 10 risks shown above, please consider that our digital arena is at risk among the top 5 of 31 risks.

Report Section 2.4: Digital Disintegration

A quote from the report:

While cyberspace has proved largely resilient to attacks and other disruptions so far, its underlying dynamic has always been such that attackers have an easier time than defenders.  There are reasons to believe that resilience is gradually being undermined, allowing this dynamic of vulnerability to become more impactful."

Unfortunately, this quote is consistent with my past writings on "Assumption of Breach" and that the attackers have it easier than the defenders -- just remember my kitchen sieve model where the CISO needs to cover every hole with one hand yet the attackers only need one opening...ugh!

So, as noted in the WEF report cyber risks can be summarized through the acronym CHEW -- crime, hactivists, espionage and war.  However, the WEF report also notes that a large cloud provider could suffer an "...Enron- or Lehman-style failure virtually overnight."  

The report continues to note that environmental triggers could easily play a role in disintegrating our digital backbone through such events as an earthquake devastating Silicon Valley (e.g., San Andreas fault) or a solar super storm could cause major outages of national electric grids, satellites, avionics or signals from global navigation satellite systems.

Hence, our ever expanding reliance on the digital highways and systems may increase the risks to our global economy.

Finally, the WEF report goes on to note:

Increasingly, there is recognition that the growing role of cyberspace is not only a technical and geopolitical concern but also presents serious risks to economic well-being.  While failure of critical online infrastructure represents a systemic risk that could impact global growth, so does a large-scale loss of trust in the Internet.  ... Effective methods for measuring and pricing cyber risks may even lead to new market-based risk management structures, which would help in understanding the systemic interdependencies...that now depend on cyberspace.

Conclusions

As usual, the 60-page report from the World Economic Forum is full of interesting perspectives on the economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological arenas surrounding global commerce and society.  I would highly suggest you take a minute to download the report and at least page through the many points of discussion in the report and gain a perspective a bit different from your normal cable news channel.  Of course I focused on the infrastructure and cyber issues in this blog; however, I also believe you will gain some very interesting perspectives on the challenges facing our children and the "teetering" issues in our increasingly multipolar world.

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Cities Under Threat from Natural Disasters -- A Risk Assessment

In a report issued by the Swiss Reinsurance Company (cover and link below), an integrated view of the risks posed to cities around the world was offered.  The report notes that "...the growing concentration of people, assets and infrastructure also means that the loss potential in urban areas is high and rising."

http://media.swissre.com/documents/Swiss_Re_Mind_the_risk.pdf

The report summary also notes that "...physical prevention measures alone do not suffice to build a resilient city, since damage from the most severe catastrophes cannot be fully averted.  An important part of resilience is how well urban societies are able to cope with financial consequences of a disaster..."

One Tables 3 and 4 of the report (below) are a summary of their findings relative to the top 10 global cities affected by the five perils of river flood, earthquake, wind storm, storm surge and tsunami.

With the continued conversation about climate change affecting sea levels and the comments noted above regarding storm surge it appears that flooding catastrophes are risks cities need to plan and prepare for.

At a minimum you may want to at least read the Preface, Introduction, and glance at the tables prepared to gain a sense of the Swiss Re approach and conclusions.  The key conclusions are:

• Asia's cities are the most at risk from natural disasters
• Saving lives is and should be the highest priority in risk mitigation efforts
• Investments to infrastructure are vital to strengthen the resilience of metropolitan areas
• Investments in infrastructure would also help cities cope better with natural disasters and other shocks such as human pandemics and acts of terrorism. 

Anyway, as an "infrastructure geek" I found this review interesting and consistent with the other lessons learned from Super Storm Sandy, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan and the recent typhoon in the Philippines.