Here we have archived some stories of interest from our news reports...
Jan 2015
John Preston and Charlotte Chadderton were invited to the Greater Manchester Local Resiience Forum at the end of 2014. John gave a keynote speech on "The resilience of the Communications Infrastructure".
October 2014
Earlier this year, the team worked with London Resilience on their Anytown exercises, looking at the ways in which community members may respond to infrastructure failure.
Jan 2015
John Preston and Charlotte Chadderton were invited to the Greater Manchester Local Resiience Forum at the end of 2014. John gave a keynote speech on "The resilience of the Communications Infrastructure".
October 2014
Earlier this year, the team worked with London Resilience on their Anytown exercises, looking at the ways in which community members may respond to infrastructure failure.
18th June 2014
Please use this link to access the transcript of the Science and Technology Committee meeting on Social media data and real time analytics, Wednesday 18th June 2014
Please use this link to access the transcript of the Science and Technology Committee meeting on Social media data and real time analytics, Wednesday 18th June 2014
Professor John Preston speaking at the Parliamentary HoC Science and Technology Committee meeting on on Social media data and real time analytics, Wednesday 18 June 2014
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=15562
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=15562
Project update: 10th December 2013
Protecting the Critical Infrastructure in Germany
Critical Infrastructure encompasses organisations and facilities of such great importance for the state and economic and social life, that if they were to fail or break down, would lead to considerable supply shortages and disruption in public security or other dramatic consequences.(The Federal Office for Information Security 2008: 5)
The Critical Infrastructure is defined in Germany as follows:
•Transport
•Energy supply
•hazardous materials
• IT and telecommunications
• The finance and insurance industries
•Food and water supply
•The authorities and legal services
•Miscellaneous (media, research centres, cultural assets and heritage)
The Critical Infrastructure in Germany is mostly at risk from extreme weather such as flooding and storms, but also from man-made events such as terrorism. Until 2001, rather than talking of protecting the Critical Infrastructure, there was a focus on civil defence, as in many other countries post-1945. In West Germany, from 1949- 1989/90 and the Fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, civil defence in Germany focussed around the threat of nuclear war. It was very much guided by Germany’s geographical location on the border between East and West. It is also key to note that ‘the enemy’ for both East and West Germans, was other Germans, as well as either Russians or the Allies. From 1989 when the Cold War ended and 1990 when Germany reunified, until 2001, civil defence took on a diminishing importance for Germany, until in December 1999 The Federal Office of Civil Defence closed altogether.
The attacks of 11the Sept 2001 on the US shocked Germany, and made many German politicians realise how badly prepared the country was if something similar had happened to them. The notion of Critical Infrastructure and the importance of protecting it was born in Germany too.
“Since 11 September 2001, the threat posed by international terrorism, in particular, has been the main driving force behind the state’s efforts to achieve and maintain protection and security.” (The Ministry of the Interior 2009:9)
Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) is currently regarded as one aspect of Civil Defence in Germany. There is no department which deals with CIP alone, rather, it is dealt with by four different offices in the Ministry of the Interior, which provides overall coordination. These are:The Federal Ministry for civil defence and disaster management (BBK) opened in 2004 to improve Germany’s population protection in response to two events: 11 September attacks on the US in 2001, and the River Elbe flooding in August 2002, after which Germany agreed to form the "Neue Strategie zum Schutz der Bevölkerung in Deutschland" (New Strategy for population protection in Germany) (2002) in order to better coordinate any response to a national crisis. It is differentiated from previous responses to civil protection in that it improves the collaboration between the federal states, and it introduced a new law, Zivilschutzgesetz (Civil defence Law).
- The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe - BBK),
- The Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik - BSI),
- The Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt - BKA)
- The Federal Institute "Technical Support Service" (Federal Technical Relief Agency - Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk, THW)
There are no general laws applying to the Protection of Critical Infrastructure in Germany. The Civil Protection Law (1997, last amended 2009) pertains to the non-military measures which aim to protect the population, their homes and places of work, services important to life or defence, businesses or organisations and cultural heritage from the effects of war. This includes: self-protection, warning of the population, buildings and construction, evacuation processes, health and medicine, cultural heritage. There are individual laws which apply separately to e.g. Transport, the postal service, IT services. Emergency laws were passed in 1968 but have never been evoked.
There is also no real public discussion around the concept of CI or CIP in Germany, and Germany’s engagement with the notion is at least partly a reaction to the USA’s engagement with it.
Project update: 09 December 2013
Japan and natural disasters
Japan is a country which has meteorological and geographical conditions which bear a range of natural disasters such as typhoons, torrential rain and snow, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunami. Let me give you some data to demonstrate this. Japan is not a big country, consituting only 0.28% of the whole area of the world. However, out of the total number of large-scale earthquakes over Magnitude 6 that occurred in the world, 20.5% have happened in Japan, and 7.0% of the active volcanos in the whole world are situated in Japan. 0.3% of those who died because of natural disasters are from Japan, and 11.9% of the total damage costs due to natural disasters in the world is from Japan. Moreover, official sources have confirmed that Japan entered into the 'quake-active' phase, and its beginning was the Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 (Cabinet Office, White Papers on Disaster Management). Preparedness for natural disaster, particularly earthquakes and tsunami, is taken extremely seriously across Japan. Our project is examining what has been/is being done in Japan.