INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN EARTH EX CROSS-SECTOR POWER OUTAGE EXERCISE

Critical infrastructure owners/operators and government agencies have an opportunity to participate in a new exercise designed to let participants evaluate and improve restoration support, preparedness, response and recovery plans for severe hazards, using a long-term, widespread power outage as a test case.  A webinar about the exercise is planned for July 19 and you may register here.

Hosted by the Electric Infrastructure Reliability Council, which recently published a handbook on water sector resilience to long-term power outages, EARTH EX 2017 is a four-hour decentralized, international, multi-sector, self-assessed exercise that will consider the impact of a long-duration power outage on critical infrastructure.  The no cost exercise will take place on Wednesday, August 23.  Private sector and government organizations in the U.S. and around the world interested in participating in EARTH EX 2017 are invited to register online.

In recent years concerns have grown over the potential for severe malicious or natural “Black Sky” hazards that include long duration power outages and which could lead to cascading failures of water supply systems and other interdependent infrastructure.  To prepare for these risks, careful sector-by-sector resilience planning is crucial. Cross-sector exercises are an important component to understanding interdependencies and shared vulnerabilities.  As a “come as you are” exercise, EARTH EX will offer executive and senior level operational decision makers a unique opportunity to examine preparedness, response and restoration postures for severe hazard scenarios – all without extensive pre-exercise preparation.