Electricity infrastructure is key to sustain human and economic wellbeing since it supplies energy to industrial, commercial and financial sectors, critical services (health, traffic control, water supply), communication networks, and hence almost all activities in modern societies. Consequently, the effects of long electricity blackouts have demonstrated impacts on economic activities and social stability and security. A framework for disaster management and resilience of the power sector is needed, beyond the occurrence of "average" outages contemplated in current security standards. This framework should consider network management under the occurrence of natural hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis that may cause major blackouts, and assess proper measures to manage the associated disasters. Developing and implementing such a framework will be crucial to increase the opportunities for Chile and other countries, especially developing and low-income ones located around the Pacific Ring of Fire which are particularly exposed to the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis. In this context, this project will undertake holistic risk analyses associated with natural hazards on electricity networks along with identification of mitigation and adaptation measures that can allow us to manage the arising disasters. This holistic perspective of disaster management and resilience will be supported by development of mathematical models to, firstly, assess risks related to high impact low probability events, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, on the electric power systems. These models will then serve to identify an optimal portfolio of preventive and corrective measures that can support mitigation of impacts and compare different adaptation strategies. In particular, besides classical infrastructure reinforcement, we will assess how operational measures for disaster management, for instance though distributed energy systems, e.g., based on communities and microgrids, can provide system resilience. Building on this last point, resilience can in fact also be built through citizens and communities and by how they prepare for, and respond to, power outages. Such preparedness could for instance be led by the electricity companies and targeted at the individual and community levels by sharing accountability for response across the official responders, local officials, community groups, individual citizens, and the electricity companies. The aim is for households to have response strategies that are complemented by resilience measures prepared for (and by) the community. Such shared responsibility is becoming the response culture in the UK (with the very recent recognition of spontaneous volunteers as a source of untrained, unknown support which converges at the time of an incident). In developing countries, where the capacity of official responders may be insufficient given the scale of the disaster, the reliance on community preparedness and spontaneous emergence of willing helpers is more acute to lessen the effects of an incident and quicken the return to normality. Thus, in addition to more technical features, the framework developed here will explicitly include community resilience as a way to lessen the impact of outages and manage disasters. By analysing several case studies in Chile based on both data from past experiences and simulations, we will propose a general framework for disaster management and network and community resilience which can be applicable to other developing and low-income countries. We will use the research findings to develop networks standards following disasters along with a standard on community resilience to power outages. These standards will include socio-economic and engineering indicators that can support monitoring of network resilience and readiness to withstand natural, catastrophic events as well as quantifying impacts of such events after they occur, enhancing quality of post-mortem analysing

Electricity infrastructure is key to sustain human and economic well-being since it supplies energy to industrial, commercial and financial sectors, critical services (health, traffic control, water supply), communication networks, and hence almost all activities in modern societies. Consequently, the effects of long electricity blackouts have demonstrated impacts on economic activities and social stability and security. A framework for disaster management and resilience of the power sector is needed, beyond the occurrence of "average" outages contemplated in current security standards. This framework should consider network management under the occurrence of natural hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis that may cause major blackouts, and assess proper measures to manage the associated disasters. Developing and implementing such a framework will be crucial to increase the opportunities for Chile and other countries, especially developing and low-income ones located around the Pacific Ring of Fire which are particularly exposed to the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis. In this context, this project will undertake holistic risk analyses associated with natural hazards on electricity networks along with identification of mitigation and adaptation measures that can allow us to manage the arising disasters. This holistic perspective of disaster management and resilience will be supported by development of mathematical models to firstly assess risks related to high impact low probability events, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, on the electric power systems. These models will then serve to identify an optimal portfolio of preventive and corrective measures that can support mitigation of impacts and compare different adaptation strategies. In particular, besides classical infrastructure reinforcement, we will assess how operational measures for disaster management, for instance though distributed energy systems, e.g., based on communities and microgrids, can provide system resilience. Building on this last point, resilience can in fact also be built through citizens and communities and by how they prepare for, and respond to, power outages. Such preparedness could for instance be led by the electricity companies and targeted at the individual and community levels by sharing accountability for response across the official respondents, local officials, community groups, individual citizens, and the electricity companies. The aim is for households to have response strategies that are complemented by resilience measures prepared for (and by) the community. Such shared responsibility is becoming the response culture in the UK (with the very recent recognition of spontaneous volunteers as a source of untrained, unknown support which converges at the time of an incident). In developing countries, where the capacity of official respondents may be insufficient given the scale of the disaster, the reliance on community preparedness and spontaneous emergence of willing helpers is more acute to lessen the effects of an incident and quicken the return to normality. Thus, in addition to more technical features, the framework developed here will explicitly include community resilience as a way to lessen the impact of outages and manage disasters. By analysing several case studies in Chile based on both data from past experiences and simulations, we will propose a general framework for disaster management and network and community resilience which can be applicable to other developing and low-income countries. We will use the research findings to develop networks standards following disasters along with a standard on community resilience to power outages. These standards will include socio-economic and engineering indicators that can support monitoring of network resilience and readiness to withstand natural, catastrophic events as well as quantifying impacts of such events after they occur, enhancing quality of post-morterm analysis.

During the last decade, many initiatives have been undertaken to make progress in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and response. However the progress in disaster risk reduction has been limited by the failure to acknowledge and address the development processes as the root causes of disasters. Previous initiatives have concentrated on reducing existing risks, rather than on how risks are generated and accumulated in the first place through development projects that are taking place as a part of the reconstruction phase after a disaster or in response to the demand of urban sprawl. Furthermore, work on resilience has attracted criticism for its failure to involve vulnerable communities and address the issue of equity and power. As a result, the Sustainable Development Goals which call for "reduced inequalities", "inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities" and "partnerships for goals" and the Sendai Priority 4 that calls for build-back better in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction, are hard to achieve due to a lack of research knowledge, current practices and policies. One of the explanations for increasing risks is that the development and disaster risk reduction decision-making processes occur in silos, conducted by different agencies, institutions and other actors with differing priorities, perspectives and time horizons. Therefore, there is an urgent need to transform current development practices that increase or create risks, as well as unfairly distributing risks to vulnerable communities, to a new form of development practice that is equitable and resilient. This project consortium believe such a transformation can be achieved by enabling cross-organisational collaboration, openness, adaptability, learning, impartiality, power sharing and public participation. The project aims to investigate processes, governance structures, policies and technology that can enable a transition towards a more risk-sensitive and transformative urban development approach. More specifically, the project aims to investigate the nature of a sociotechnical system, enabled by a collaborative foresight and consensus building virtual workspace, which can promote collaborative governance approach across relevant organisations and support the transparent and democratic involvement of all the relevant stakeholders (including experts from local authorities, disaster management authorities, developers, poor and vulnerable communities, and humanitarian organisations) to analyse, forecast, visualize and debate disaster-risk trade-offs and to choose development plans that ensure sustainability and equitable resilience, giving considerations to climate change adaptation. The key research questions that the project is aiming to address are: What type of formal and informal collaborative partnerships need to be established to alleviate long-standing tensions between development and DRR and progress towards more risk-sensitive and transformative urban development? What changes are required within the current urban planning process to facilitate risk-sensitive urban development, giving consideration to natural disasters and their impact on the environment, economy and vulnerable communities? What are the type of narratives that need to be developed, presented and discussed to establish a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the proposed developments on the community, economy and environment ? What are the vulnerabilities that need to be considered within the local context? How can we make participatory planning more accessible to a range of communities? Three countries (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia) from the Asia-Pacific region have been selected for this research since the Asia-Pacific region continues to be the world's most disaster prone region. These countries are frequently affected by a multitude of natural hazards including floods, landslides, cyclones and droughts.