Towards a Baltic Sea Region Strategy in Critical ... - Helsinki.fi

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Several conclusions are made on the basis of these cases. First of all, they
highlight the importance of independent emergency supplies for the emergency
services organisations. The rescue services themselves are becoming more and
more dependent on information systems, which in turn are dependent on electricity
supply. Decision support and incident follow-up systems are being developed in
both Sweden and Finland. These systems should be designed in such a way, that
they remain at least partly operational when the normal power and communication
systems fail. The sharing of experiencies and ideas across nation borders becomes
an important factor
The importance of securing vulnerable institutions in society during
exceptional weather circumstances became apparent during both Gudrun and
Pyry/Janika storms. After only a few hours of blackout, the situation may become
serious, requiring immediate action by the emergency services to save lives. The
distribution of drinking water and the risk of contamination must also be taken
into account during prolonged blackouts.
The cases show that there can never be too much interoperability and
cooperation between the organisations involved, no matter whether they are rescue
service organisations or companies from the private sector. This does not only
apply to exceptional circumstances, it should be a natural part of the everyday
activities.
In general, the case study shows that there is a need for better preparedness.
The consequences of widespread and long-lasting electricity blackouts can be
reduced by improving the electricity network structure or speeding up the
maintenance. As improving the network structure is expensive, a reasonable tradeoff
between network investments and maintenance costs is required.
Regardless of all investments in electricity networks and their better
reliability continuous electricity supply cannot be guaranteed in all cases.
Therefore, a better resilience is needed. There are many elements of improving
resilience like having ready-made plans of how and when personnel should be
called in or put in stand-by, keeping maps up to date, following weather forecasts,
making deals with third parties for providing spare parts and additional equipment,
cooperation with the emergency services, and so forth. The down time can be
significantly reduced by increasing preparedness.
Information and communication technology
Chapter III is a case study in the field of information and communication
technology. While drawing a general picture of this field and the respective
vulnerabilities, the chapter’s ‘sub-case study’ deals with the professional mobile
radio network.
The ability to access, capture, store, process and distribute electronic
information rapidly is today the key to the successful operation of both public and
private organizations operating in any one of a range of functional sectors. As
such, these capabilities are strongly correlated to national security, the raising of
the standard of living and sustenance of technology-driven knowledge-based
economies.
The ever increasing dependence on information and communications
technology solutions represents a crucial need, which can only be met by
underlying systems that function according to expectations. A subset of these
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