Powering Through: Building Critical Infrastructure Resilience

We can outsmart disaster through intelligent planning. 

There is more to critical infrastructure than roads and dams—our everyday life relies on invisible infrastructure, from wastewater management to communications technology. Whether we’re charging our phones or seeking emergency healthcare, we trust that our electrical grid will be reliable. So what happens to that infrastructure when disaster hits? 

Will the kitchen tap bring us water after a freak weather event? At the supermarket, will we find what we need during a pandemic? Or might water systems and supply chains turn out to be underprepared for surviving disruption? 

We don’t need to wait for a cyberattack, hurricane, or severe winter storm to find us. Resilience is a plan, not an afterthought, when the grid is down. When emergency alerts blare and the lights go out, our nation’s critical infrastructure can be prepared. 

After reading this book, you will know:

• How our power grid arrived at a state of vulnerability
• What obstacles we face to preventing mass, long term power failure
• How industry professionals can push for a more resilient critical infrastructure

With a focus on our nation’s electric grid, Powering Through offers a comprehensive look at multiple threats, reaching across infrastructure sectors to address interdependencies. It serves as an actionable consequence management handbook for any professional seeking a route to greater resilience. Each chapter concludes with a chart that helps the reader assess current approaches and orient an action plan towards greater resilience.

Chapters concentrate on key infrastructure areas:

• Electric Power
• Communications
• Water & Wastewater
• Food & Agriculture
• Transportation
• Healthcare & Public Health
• Emergency Management
• Chemical
• Information & Operations Technology

A key addition to any library of natural disaster and survival books, Powering Through focuses on disaster preparation and prevention. This updated edition builds on its 2016 predecessor through three key questions:

• What happens to each critical infrastructure sector in the event of electric power failure?
• How can each sector help restore electric power in a grid down scenario?
• What can each sector change now to become more resilient? 

“Powering Through: Building Critical Infrastructure Resilience provides the most comprehensive review of threats, impacts, consequences, and preventative measures any organization can take to be more resilient to extended power outages that we have seen in our 16 years in the disaster management and business continuity field.” - Tom Moran, Executive Director of the All Hazards Consortium

Additional contributors to the 2020 edition:

Frederick Ferrer
Edward Goldberg
Gregory Hertz
James LeBlanc
Stephanie Lokmer
Chuck Nettleship
Fred Rosa
Janet Thomas
Apolonio Garcia
Daniel Honore
John Reasbeck
Cheryl Santor
Anthony Adebonojo
Nathan Edwards
Eleanora Ann Gianni
John Juhasz
Mitchell Kerman
Roger Rosewall
Henry Cooper