Saturday 14 November 2015

Evaluating the Protocol for the prevention of pollution in Madrid.

by Jorge García Carnicero

Traffic restriction in Madrid because of high levels of pollution offers different analysis from a business continuity perspective, since the difficulties of employees to reach their workplaces (already driven in different posts in the past, like traffic jumps or snow storms, etc) to the supply problems that could impact to small  shops. 
However, I would like to focus on the measures and the response carried out by citizens to the restrictions imposed by the council.
 
From a general perspective, the problem could be summarized as the following: during the last week a powerful anticyclone has installed in the Iberian Peninsula which has bring a very stable situation from a climatological perspective, but that has led an grow of the concentration of nitrogen dioxide, NO2, which is a pollutant produced mainly in the fossil fuel combustion process, and cause serious health problems.

The Madrid Council has decided to try to reduce the pollution level activating the Protocol for the Prevention of Pollution in Madrid, which is a set of measures that has to be adopted during this scenarios the high level of pollution by nitrogen dioxide. 
Beyond the political analysis, which is probably debatable and subjective, I think it is worth analyzing the mentioned Protocol and the answer is having citizenship.
The Protocol is divided into 4 blocks:
  1. Introduction, in which is described the air pollution problem and their risks. 
  2. Zoning the city: in order to propone the correc measueres, there are defined 4 zones: M-30 interior, South-east, North-east, Northeast and Northwest.
  3. Actuation levels definition. There are three differents actuation levels, depending on the Nitrogen Dioxide concentration: Prenotice, Notice and Alert. Recollected data from the measures stations are used to do so. 
  4. Possible Scenarios: There are described different scenarios depending on the level of contamination and the time since citizens has been under this contamination level, going from Scenario 0 (informative), level 1, 2 and 3 (Notice or Prenotice) and reaching the highest level as an Alert Scenario. 
  5. Measures: Define the different measures that are going to be carried out in each scenario.  
  6. Activation and deactivation of levels. Activation and  deactivation criteria
  7. Description of operational activities: Identifies the Group which is responsible of the application of the Protocol as a group of coordination and implementation of the protocol. 
  8. Effective date.  Date in which the Protocol will ve effective (march the 1st 2016)
As it could be seen, the Protocol has a tipical squema of a Business Continuity Plan, except for a point which I personally consider highly important: Test. Perhaps if these tests were defined before the activation of the protocol and this test should be carried out there wouldn’t haapened such a lack of understanding and mistakes that has happened during today. 

Even so, activation of the protocol itself can be considered a test of coordination and citizen response to an exceptional scenario, because in this case the scenario is important, but not critical. It can be used as way to test the agility when transferring information to citizens, stablishing the response measures and evaluating the response of the compliance of proposed actions. 

In a permanent connected world, like today, in which citizens are continuously getting information about what happen, there are opportunities to define scenarios and response measures by big cities councils more ambitious than the ones defined by now. This is what should to be seen by governments in order to increase the resilience of cities and the services that are delivered to the citizens and the companies in which the citizens are working. 

Thursday 8 October 2015

Transport Problems


By Jorge García Carnicero

This week there has been two events that should be attended by business continutiy managers in their continuity scenarios. There are the huge traffic jam that occurred in Madrid last Monday and the problem because of a sabotage in the rail singaling system in the  highspeed traing (AVE) between Madrid and Barcelona. Both events has had the same consecuence: lack of certain profiles in their work places, that could be in their usual work place or after traveling to other city.
Analyzing possible solutions for this problem, and assuming that  it’s not possible to foresee the problem before it happen, the best option is to establish the mechanism required to:
  1. Warn the employees that there has been a problem related with transport, which requires that the company must realize that there is a problem
  2. Establish the mechanism required in ordert the employees could work remotely, through teleworking/homeworking.

 Undoubtedly, to allow the employees to be warned there has to be established a supervision system by the company, which requires a 7x24 alert system. This system could be rolled out internally or could be outsourced, always taking into account the cost-benefit relation. It could be also interesting to be incorporated in the early alert system, in the security SOCs, for example.


From teleworking, are still valid the solutions described in my post Legionella, a real threat