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Interesting times need a measured response

20 April 2010

Four months into 2010, it seems we have been hit by that famous Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
Top of the list, at least on Monday as this was written, is the total ban on UK flights occasioned by volcanic eruptions in Iceland. There is a contingency - more trains, more ferries, more buses - but it's rather a free market and patchy approach. By Monday there were suggestions that the government would requisition HMS Ark Royal and effect a Dunkirk-style lift from the Spanish coast.
It is a reminder that our strategic infrastructure is vulnerable to all kinds of events: the very unlikely, the unexpected, and as in this case, events that are well within the bounds of possibility, but whose effects are unpredictable. We can predict the general effects of a volcanic eruption, but a cloud of dust settling over the UK, on the weekend at the end of the Easter holiday when teachers, children and parents were all returning from abroad, has a low probability.
What should infrastructure providers learn from this event? Not too much. So now we know that an event may be more damaging than predicted? Well, yes we do, but we should be wary of altering our plans.
Look at the consensus after the unexpected snow and ice storms this winter. At the time, there were calls for immediate action, but once transport was moving again, most people agreed that investing in huge stockpiles of grit would likely leave us looking at those grit piles for many years, wishing we had used the money for something else.
When you have to plan for the decades to come, not the two weeks just gone, a long view is needed.
That's especially important if you think that the conditions - like the climate - may be changing. Just because a one-in-fifty-year event happened this year doesn't make it more likely to happen next year. It's the long-term trend that will reveal the true state of affairs.
It's a delicate balance, but utilities must keep pushing that message out. Long term, the key is to try to understand the potential worst case scenarios, but to plan using rather more measured cost-benefit considerations.
Source: Disconnector

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