Earlier, more than 100 municipal officials took part in U-LEAD’s info session “Measures of Local Self-Government to Ensure the Resilience of Critical Infrastructure”.
“The protection of the critical infrastructure of municipalities is built on various data. At the past info sessions, experts explained the definitions of “risk” and “threat” and their assessment techniques, talked about sources of information for risk assessment and presented a model list of threats. The next step is to process the results of the risk assessment. Following the analysis, certain measures should be developed to mitigate the identified risks,” said Oleh Ilnytskyi, Head of the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Mykolaiv Oblast and moderator of the event.
Speaking about risk management, Vasyl Kundryk, Expert on Regulatory and Legal Issues of Ensuring the Resilience of Municipalities and Protection of Critical Infrastructure at U-LEAD, explored the types of risks and factors of their acceptability or unacceptability, as well as provided examples of tolerated risks, which are essentially controlled:
“An unacceptable risk is one that cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. For example, a missile attack on the building of the city council, which has no bomb shelter. This risk is so serious that it is hard to imagine as being plausible given the current situation, since solutions have been implemented at the state level to prevent it (the requirement to disperse workers, equip bomb shelters, etc.). These decisions are aimed at reducing this risk in terms of potential consequences.”
According to him, local self-government bodies must independently determine whether the risks are acceptable and model measures for their control. One of the criteria is the economic effect, although ethical, social and cultural issues that do not fit into the economic model should also be considered.
“This is especially important when considering the cost/value of human life,” the speaker emphasised.
According to Serhii Terelia, Adviser on Municipal Management and Recovery at the Regional Office of U-LEAD in the Zakarpattia Oblast, risk management consists of the following stages:
- Prevention,
- Response,
- Recovery.
He urges to focus on preventive measures such as physical protection of facilities (security, passive or engineering protection), development of internal policies (operational rules, information exchange, use of property, etc.), preparing alternative sources of power or communication, strengthening the competences and skills of facility personnel, forming reserves (material, financial, means of personal protection).
Speaking about responsiveness, he stressed the feasibility of providing a visual representation of processes in the form of maps or block diagrams. He believes that this approach helps turn long descriptive documents into simple and clear visualisations.
At the recovery stage, the following measures are possible: assistance to the survivors, repairs, setting up alternative sources of power, communication and supply, search and rescue operations, mitigating any delayed effects of the threat, public outreach and other communications, performance assessment for the previous stages.
“When designing measures, keep in mind that municipal resilience programs, in accordance with Article 22 of the Law “On Critical Infrastructure”, must include measures for the interaction within the national critical infrastructure protection system, as well as the restoration of the functioning of critical infrastructure. All these developed measures form the basis of the Safety and Resilience Plan,” said Serhii Terelia.
Another important point is that in the structure of the Municipal Resilience Strengthening Plan proposed by the Guidelines, all measures are grouped by vital services in accordance with the Law “On Critical Infrastructure” rather than by critical infrastructure facilities.
Summing up, the experts stressed that local self-government bodies could model measures based on the regulations on the protection of critical infrastructure. In this case, they can apply to the protection of facilities of various forms of ownership rather than strictly municipal ones.