Today's society is faced with increasingly diverse and costly natural and human-triggered threats. Many trends and dependencies are exacerbating the hazards and amplifying their impact and consequences.
The permanent concentration of populations into vulnerable regions such as flood catchment and coastal areas, temporary concentration in transit systems and at mass gatherings, combined with the general dependency on critical infrastructure to uphold socio-economic status, provide a new challenge to legislators, executives and the insurance industry.
In a world where a single plane can transport over 500 people, logistical services will deliver the next day and the disagreement of foreign policies will be indicated asymmetrically at a domestic level. International trade, transport and communication reduce our ability to contain disease and to remain unaffected by disasters or incidents occurring both at home and abroad.
Resilience refers to a series of adaptive strategies employed by public and private entities to enable them to face and survive disruptive challenges at every level, through anticipation, preparation, prevention and resolution. Resilience is a proactive endurance strategy.
The return on investment in resilience is not directly measurable and it therefore does not often merit enough attention or consideration. The expenditure and effort involved in addressing the perceived Y2K problem was viewed as a waste by many in the pre and especially post period. As a result investment in counteracting specific hazards had been regarded as futile in the face of a multitude of diverse and unpredictable situations. However, the continuity demonstrated after events subsequent to Y2K such as 9/11, the NY power cut, the Madrid and London bombings, and Indian ocean tsunami showed that this was not the case. A heightened awareness of vulnerability has been inadvertently achieved, a whole new industry created and most importantly, there has been investment in the protection of a critical infrastructure pertinent to a multitude of possible hazards.
Preparing for the Y2K problem has paid off. The realisation that diverse and, in many cases, unpredictable threats can affect us has led to renewed efforts to improve the resilience of cities and societies overall. It has become clear that it is not a specific threat per se that should become the focus of attention but the generic consequences to the infrastructures critical to the function of society and industry.
The insurance industry is being called on to help in disaster recovery and to guide preparedness in developed and developing nations alike. Both public and private sectors are addressing the topic in partnership. The Plansafe GmbH acts as a resilience facilitator assisting in the development and implementation of strategies for mitigating and preparing for diverse disasters before they happen and dealing with them when they occur.
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