An effective national response to an emergency is one that can rapidly call on the right capabilities to deliver the most effective response at the required pace. These are ‘critical capabilities’, and the Academy’s report of the same name explores how a systems approach can be applied to help strengthen the UK’s resilience to emergencies. This blog explains how the lessons from four previous emergencies can be viewed as part of a wider systems approach to building resilience.
We have identified ‘critical capabilities’ as the UK’s system of people, infrastructure and assets that build short and long-term resilience (figure 1). Networks and coordination form one of the capability groups, acting as a bridging capability that brings together the rest of the capabilities needed to understand the issue, respond and accelerate solutions.
- Find out more information on Critical Capabilities and Resilience
To develop and test the critical capabilities approach, we set out to explore four past emergencies and map their components, how the response unfolded and identify the challenges encountered. We used the networks and coordination capability group as a lens to identify how different capabilities were brought together, what went well, what challenges were encountered and what lessons could be learned.
Figure 1: The critical capability groups
The four case studies were chosen to cover a range of emergency characteristics: geographical impact (local, national, international), whether there were chronic vulnerabilities to the emergency, and if it was physical or digital. The ownership of the response sat with and across different bodies, whether central government, regulators and public sector organisations, local government and individuals.
Structured identification of capabilities
We started with desk research, using publicly available accounts of the events to identify the key stakeholders, the roles they played and the underpinning capabilities they contributed in response to the emergency. Using this process, we captured both the parts of the response that worked well and where barriers were identified.
We used Miro boards to illustrate the connections for each element of the response and tag the underpinning capability group. This enabled us to iterate as we learned more about the emergencies and to test the categorisation for different capability groups. The structure and discipline of categorising the capabilities ensured that we understood what an organisation was contributing to the response, whether that was cyber-security skills, data or R&D facilities.
The Miro tables enabled us to visualise the emergency response – building a map and linking together the organisations involved, actions and resources required, and challenges faced. It was a powerful way to highlight the relationships and interdependencies across the emergency response. Diagrams helped illustrate what could otherwise have been long text-based documents and one of our workshop participants was keen to use them as a communication tool with Local Resilience Forums to show the cascading effects.
If you are having trouble accessing the Miro board please click here. You can read the full case study document online here.
Each of the emergencies we investigated had very different characteristics, but we quickly saw common forms of network and coordination capabilities emerging. These included:
- Agile networks for rapid mobilisation: the capability to rapidly activate, assemble and coordinate a network of organisations and people to effectively deliver the components of the emergency response concurrently.
- Permeating the intersection between the public and private sector: the capability to coordinate networks bringing together public and private sector capabilities and capacity to effectively deliver the emergency response.
- Expertise and advice into governments: the capability to provide summaries of emerging evidence, communicate uncertainty and collate input from those on the ground to answer governments questions and inform decision-making.
- Local, national or international coordination: the capability to bring together a coordinated response with a network spanning a geographic footprint or scale - local, national and international.
- Facilitating effective communication: the capability for effective exchange of information, uncertainties and concerns with key stakeholders, including businesses and the public, to facilitate an effective emergency response.
Testing with collaborative storytelling
We brought together individuals who played key roles in the response or implementation of the subsequent lessons to test our understanding of events and further validate our capability groups.
These workshops were used to constructively re-tell and recount events which allowed us to compare four very different emergencies. We asked about what happened, exploring what went well, where there were barriers and understanding how uncertainty was resolved. Insights from those with experience of emergency and response are valuable to understand the unexpected vulnerabilities that occur – whether the dependence on electricity in modern buildings or challenges arising from information vacuums and spread of misinformation. We benefited from the value of hindsight and the participants’ honesty and openness were vital to explore and understand the different versions of events. Bringing together perspectives from different parts of the response to the emergency was helpful to draw out the nuance in the chains of events that happened and enabled us to explore areas of agreement and divergence.
The networks and coordination lens was an effective mechanism for focusing the conversation on the practicalities of deploying an emergency response, the people, organisations and connections that provided the different capabilities. Looking across four very different emergencies, we found many similarities, both in the challenges and capabilities that facilitated effective responses. Relationships and having the right structures in place ahead of the emergency very much lie at the heart of facilitating an agile and effective response, and where those relationships don’t exist or ownership of the response is unclear it introduces delays and challenges. By drawing together the lessons from these four disparate situations, we developed ‘practices for preparedness’ that can be applied to help government and organisations build and strengthen their resilience.
Looking ahead, we explored what might be different if an emergency happened again now. This prompted rich discussions about the potential vulnerabilities that might remain or might have emerged since, recognising the dynamic nature of threats and also changing societal expectations when it comes to communication. The discussion was very much anchored in reality, with participants spontaneously asking themselves how trends such as the increased use of social media and increased electrification would have led to a different emergency scenario to respond to – a stark reminder of the ever-evolving nature of vulnerabilities and resilience to emergencies.
Finally, at a human level, these workshops really brought the case studies to life. It reminded us that COVID-19 is not the first significant emergency and it certainly won’t be the last. All emergencies are challenging and high intensity situations for those involved in the response, and those people directly affected on the ground who bear the brunt of the impact. As individuals, we started to question how we would manage through some of these situations, and when we didn’t like the answer, we invested in a wind-up radio torch and some tins of beans - just in case!