TALKING

Scenario planning

Countries should develop and regularly update incident response plans that outline how to address disruptions and recovery strategies, including coordination among agencies and stakeholders and continuous training for personnel involved to ensure they are prepared for various scenarios. The aim here being to simulate potential disasters and confirm the adequate response time.

For instance, following the deadly floods of 1953 that saw the worst storm surge on record for the North Sea, the Netherlands has been known for its extensive flood defence systems and a strong focus on climate resilience. In 2024 the Rijkswaterstaat( Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management) prepared a new set of Delta scenarios to be better prepared for natural disasters for a time horizon of 2050 and 2100. citizens avoid congestions thanks to the Intelligence Traffic System, in Aramco the Ospas controls all the production and distribution of oil and gas.

Community engagement

Critical to risk mitigation is the engagement with local communities to raise awareness about critical situations, ensuring they know how to respond to emergencies.

During the 2024 floodings, the UAE used its National Early Warning system to ask citizens to stay indoors, avoid the shores and wadi. This same system is used for other natural disasters like sandstorms, fog, pandemics, or major outages.

According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, as of March 2024, 55 per cent of all countries in the world had reported the existence of Multi Hazard Early Warning Systems. Ten years ago not even 50 countries had such a system in place.

Continuous improvement

Crisis response and mitigation

In a crisis or incident, a swift response is required to minimise the impact, rapidly restore operations, and maintain essential services when disruption occurs. All key stakeholders need to have a Common Operational Picture to take timely and effective decisions.

Command and Control

From Dr Strangelove to James Bond’ s many villains’ equipment’ s to the Truman Show or Apollo 13, Hollywood and Bollywood shaped suspense by bringing to the screens the tension emanating from control rooms.

Risks never stay still and will continue to evolve. It is important to include a proper feedback loop, and organise strong public-private partnerships to enable smooth maintenance and upgrades and to ensure future ready technology roadmaps.

By fostering collaboration between government entities and private sector organisations, more knowledge, resources, and best practices can be shared in infrastructure management and resilience strategies.

India for instance is one of the key implementors of public-private partnerships across infrastructure sectors such as roads, ports, airports, energy and water sanitation.

Yet control rooms are only the most visible part of crisis management, but the ergonomic desks and flashy screens wouldn’ t mean anything if it wasn’ t for the ability to bring together in the same place real time integrated information flows, standard and crisis processes, decision makers of multiple departments and a clear chain of command: this is the concept behind the Common Operational Picture.

Control rooms are the operational nerve centres that monitor, manage and respond to events across complex, mission-critical environments, ensuring the continuity, safety, and resilience of national infrastructure.

In Doha during the World Cup they helped with crowd management, transportation coordination and emergency response, in New Cairo they help

This enables countries to leverage advanced technologies such as IoT, AI, and big data analysis for monitoring infrastructure health, predicting failures, and enhancing response capabilities.

Conclusion

Protecting critical infrastructure requires multiple processes, technologies and department to work together. Ensuring resilience requires a multi-layered approach cope with weakest points.

By following best practices in preparedness, crisis mitigation and continuous improvement, countries can improve the resilience of their critical infrastructure, minimising disruptions and enhancing recovery capabilities during emergencies. p

38 INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST www. intelligentcio. com