1. Public expectations and resilience
LESSON 7
Public expectations and resilience

2. Lesson overview Background CI resilience and public expectations
Public expecations as a resilience target
Summary

3. 1. Background
Societal resilience

4. Transformative capacity
Societal resilience
Three kinds of capacities needed to deal with threats more competently:
Coping capacity
Adaptive capacity
Transformative capacity
Coping capacity
Adaptive capacity
Transformative capacity
Keck, M. & P. Sakdapolrak (2013). What is social resilience? lessons learned and ways forward. Erdkunde 67(1), 5–19

5. Coping capacity
“the ability of social actors to cope with and overcome all kinds of adversities” “the ability to respond, absorb and recover from a disruptive event and is related to a time frame close to the event”
Keck, M. & P. Sakdapolrak (2013). What is social resilience? lessons learned and ways forward. Erdkunde 67(1), 5–19

6. Societal resilience
Changing behaviours in the face of disaster, in order to accept a reduction in the quality, quantity or availability of a service provided by a critical infrastructure (CI) can be seen as coping capacity and thus a key component of societal resilience.
Since coping is a temporary solution, the CI service would be restored quickly enough to not compromise society long term.

7. Societal resilience and CI operators
Indicators related to critical infrastructure are often included in societal resilience assessment frameworks
Increasing the resilience of CI therefore serves to increase societal resilience
Positive feedback loop between the two types of resilience
Societal resilience
Critical infrastructure resilience

8. Societal resilience and communication
The public expects critical infrastructure operators to be information providers.
Societal resilience can be increased through improvements in information and communication.

9. CI operators and communication
Information regarding critical infrastructures is of great interest to the public in times of crisis
Citizens are likely to expect regular updates on progress towards restoration of services
Operators should avoid allowing an “expectation gap” between themselves and the public
Expectation gaps can be decreased by effective communication on service disruption management and restoration times.
Petersen, L., Fallou, L., Reilly, P., Serafinelli, E. (2016). Exploring public expectations for aid from critical infrastructure operators. Proceedings of the 52nd ESReDA Seminar, May 30-31, 2016, Kaunas, Lithuania.

10. 2. CI resilience and public expectations

11. CI resilience and public expectations
During a disaster, there are two components of CI resilience that are particularly pertinent:
Maintaining the minimum acceptable level of service
Rapidly restoring full services

12. CI resilience and public expectations
No consensus currently exists on what should be the minimum acceptable level of service or restoration time.
To account for these factors, actors that meet public needs (e.g. CI operators) should consider public expectations and tolerance levels.
Studies within the IMPROVER project has shown that the general public has reasonable expectations of CI operators in crisis times: they are willing to cope in times of crisis.
Petersen, L., Fallou, L., Reilly, P., Serafinelli, E. (2016). Exploring public expectations of critical infrastructure operators and developing resilience criteria. Proceedings of the 9th IFED Forum, December 7-19, 2016, Stoos, Switzerland.

13. 3. Public expectations as a resilience target

14. Public expectations as a resilience target
The general public’s declared coping capacity can be used as a criteria for CI resilience evaluation.
Public perception of their own coping capacity in times of crisis must be obtained so that it is comparable to the technical performance measures of the service in question.

15. Public expectations as a resilience target
Crisis communication
Societal resilience
Public expectations
CI resilience
Still too high?

16. Public expectations as a resilience target: questionnaire
Our suggestion is to use a questionnaire to determine the coping capacity of the general public.
The aim of the questionnaire:
to have a comprehensive understanding of the local population’s expectations and tolerance levels in relation to both a reduced level of service and of crisis communication during disasters.
Note: it is the public’s own views that are of interest!

17. Example results from a public expectations questionnaire

18. 4. Summary

19. Summary
Coping capacity is a key concept of societal resilience and can be increased by effective communication
The public expects CI operators to provide information
The public has reasonable expectations and are willing to cope
Public expectations can be used as criteria for CI resilience evaluation

20. Discussion questions 1 2 3
How do societal resilience, critical infrastructure and public expectations interact?
Why should CI operators be proactive in communicating crisis information?
How should one measure public expectations?

21. Improved risk evaluation and implementation of resilience concepts to critical infrastructure