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Category: Resilience

Anytown – latest visualisation

Anytown – latest visualisation

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Displaying complex or detailed information in a digestable way is always an interesting challenge. It’s certainly s certainly one of the challenges that I’ve had with Anytown, my project to better understand interdependencies and complexities within and between systems.

Here’s my latest attempt at showing some of this information, which I developed for an NHS England briefing today, using information from the Hurricane Sandy report “A stronger, more resilient New York.”

Linkage

Nodes of different ‘city networks’ are shown in thematic colours (Gas, Electricity, Fuel, Water, Telecommunications and Wastewater). Please note that this is an illustration not a schematic of each network. The connections within networks are shown with black lines, and where there is an interdependency with another network it’s shown in red.

I’m now working on a way of using this alongside the previously developed ripple diagrams to better articulate interdependencies, ideally in an interactive way. If you have any thoughts on how this could best be achieved, drop a comment in the box below, or get in touch directly via Contact Us.

At the movies: World War Z

At the movies: World War Z

Reading Time: 5 minutes

This post needs three caveats. First, I’m by no means a zombie expert. Second, I have not read Max Brooks’ novel, although appreciate the narrative device is dramatically different.

wwz cropped

Finally, at just shy of 1000 words, it turns out I have a lot to say about zombies! My guess is that this stems from a traumatic experience as an 8 year old watching a cannibalism story on BBC’s Crimewatch. I still get the shivers on hearing the theme tune.

Valerie over at Emergency Management suggests that Zombies could be considered a Disaster Preparedness Meme; having appeared on official channels such as the CDC blog.

I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say that we’re in meme territory here, but we’ve certainly got a lot of zombies about at the moment. Here’s my take on what World War Z tells us from a resilience perspective.

Establishing what happened

  • There are several hints throughout that the government (in itself this is interesting, usually it’s a scientist or a conspiracy theorist that the Government don’t take seriously) knew that there was a potential for something significant. This isn’t confirmed in dialogue, but a spattering of lingering looks between government officials provides enough to read between the lines.
  • Despite the disruption to phone networks, we still see traces of international surveillance. Quite why so much of this had to be first hand data collection from Brad is a mystery, but I suppose it’s difficult to dramatise an exchange of emails.

Prior Levels of Preparedness

We begin in the middle of the action – as a result, examples of emergency preparedness are scant, but I did make a few observations

  • That said, there are one or two examples of emergency preparedness. The best example is probably the family in New Jersey who have stockpiled food (and weapons) and have candles on hand for when the power goes off.
  • The film also hints at some of the perils of not being prepared. As new of the outbreak becomes common knowledge, we see supermarkets ransacked – a reminder to have a stockpile at home perhaps?
  • Thankfully for us, the protagonist has a history working with the UN, which stands him in good stead for the rest of the film, adapting to circumstances and being resourceful with equipment

Response

With much of the US Government taken out early on in the film (the film makes a stong mention of the UN – an organisation to which Pitt is connected) it’s down to Brad and dude on the boat to try and save humanity. Whilst this is probably a stretch of the imagination, it reinforces the point of ensuing resilience and sustainability of your own team, an important business continuity consideration.

I did think it was interesting to see cordons being used for containment. There are very few occasions where this is permitted in the UK. However, a double line of police cars is no match for Pitt’s RV, which effectively conveys the lengths people will go to not to be contained.

Unlike other disaster films, there are no casualties. You’re either alive or undead. This means we don’t see too much in the way of how medical facilities cope with a surge in demand.

The Science Part

As is often the way in these films, the young virologist who is confident of finding the solution, manages to accidentally shoot himself. A reminder about the risks associated with a single point of failure.

From soldiers in South Korea, we’re told that that Jerusalem has isolated itself by building a large wall (surely this is a topical reference to Israeli/Palestinian policies? Turns out Al Jazeera made this connection too).  This reminded me to the small Derbyshire village of Eyam, which successful avoided the Plague. Simultaneous infection of cities all over the globe seems a little unlikely. However, real-life experience from H1N1 flu was that many large urban centres identified their first cases within a week of the declaration of an event of international significance.

The 12 second ‘conversion’ from human to zombie is incredibly quick. The timescales and convulsions shown present more like nerve agent exposure than bacteria or virus. Whilst the ‘flocking’ behaviour of zombies toward the source of noise isn’t new, the collective emergent response to form a pyramid of zombies to breach the wall was interesting (and technically not unfeasible).

Communications were a dominant theme in the film. The trusty satellite phone made an appearance; I must have missed the part where they realise that it’s cloudy so it won’t connect, or how Brad was able to recharge his device. I thought perhaps the filmmakers glossed over the true impact that a loss of telecommunications would have. We’re now so used to texting/emailing/tweeting/skype-ing (and yes, even phoning) that the distress caused when these systems are not available would be significant. It seemed overly convenient that the family groups depicted were all together, rather than being separated.

I did think it would be unlikely for a research facility of that nature to store all their ‘deadly’ samples all in the same fridge, but I guess it makes for an easier storyline.

The part that I found hardest to believe (apart from Pitt’s hair) related to the ‘cure’. Let’s give the whole population a disease to ‘camouflage’ ourselves. Whilst giving ourselves disease is nothing new (vaccination) I’d expect it would be more thoroughly assessed before inducing meningitis. Did they consider just using the pathogen as an aftershave? Eau de Ebola? Perhaps they did, but with Brad beard never getting past ‘rugged’ it was difficult to tell how much time was passing.

Other observations

Brad Pitt’s hair. Need I say more?

Whilst he might have had irritating hair, I liked Brad Pitt’s cautiousness. Too often the leading man just goes in all guns blazing. Brad was a (slightly) more considered hero, resourceful and aware that there were no second chances.

Verdict

brain  brain  brain  brain (4 brains)

Final Word: Not a cross bow in sight and another innovative use for duck tape (surely a staple of anyone’s Grab Bag?!)

 

Image Source: Plan B Entertainment

A UK Department of Homeland Security?

A UK Department of Homeland Security?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Yesterday a report was released which called for a “Major overhaul of emergency services…to increase U.K. resilience and security“.

Proposals in this All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homeland Security report (which is highly provocative, perhaps deliberately so?), include the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security and a merger of fire services and ambulance trusts.

paradigm-shift-cartoon

This would represent a paradigm shift in not just how the emergency services opperate, but, I feel, also opens the door to more collaborative styles of working across other agencies. Federation is an interesting approach, and one which should not be dismissed without consideration. However, understandably, the emergency services will be concerned about what these proposals mean.

Setting up a UK-DHS, wouldn’t be without it’s complications (one of which would certainly centre around ‘Americanisation’), and may strain or fracture some existing relationships in an attempt to build others. The Ambulance Service, for instance, currently works very closely with hospitals, and this is facilitated to some degree by ‘answering to’ the same Government Department. The future of these relationships would need careful consideration.

The diffuse structure of public services in the UK, as with most things, presents both challenges and opportunities.Establishing an umbrella structure and a Chief of the Emergency Services (a further proposal) could reduce the current relative autonomy. The report suggests that this would be similar to how the Chief of Defence Staff currently provides coordination and consistency for the military. I don’t have extensive experience of how the military works internally, but externally it certainly appears to provide a ‘united front’, and perhaps there is value in looking into this model.

A merger of fire and ambulance organisations in the UK has been suggested before, by the Chief Fire Officers Association. Providing that this proposal is around shared costs, rather than competencies I think there could be benefits. All organisations are looking to make savings without impacting on front line services, and this suggestion shouldn’t be discounted just because it’s unpalettable. However, I think the inherent risk, for example, of getting fire fighters to do the jobs of medical professionals, or visa-versa; would be far too great.

I wonder if the review group looked at benefits from further centralisation? Do we really need 43 Police forces, 46 Fire Services and 11 Ambulance Trusts? Could we not just have 1 of each, with local delivery units? It’s vital that the emergency services continue to provide first class responses to the public, that has to be their priority. But it’s surely worth looking at all potential methods to deliver those services, even if they challenge the here and now?

I’m sure there will be much discussion on these recommendations. Whether there is any resultant change is almost not the point, it’s more important that debates and discussion continue to happen about how we can ensure the best possible provision of emergency services.

I was at a JESIP event earlier this week and it seemed to me that the overarching objective of the programme is to develop a better answer to the question “Why do you do things like that?” than “Because we always have done”. Seems to me that this report is looking to do similar.

Image Source: standford.edu

Talking about talking about risk

Talking about talking about risk

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Apocalyptic movies are a sucessful genre, 2012 took $769,679,473 at the box office. By my rudimentary maths, working on an average ticket price of £8, this means 64,456,930 people (globally) have seen John Cusack fly a plane through tumbling skyscrapers (if you haven’t there’s a still below). Anyway, what’s the point of this…well, despite movie success, getting the public to appreciate real risks of emergencies is often a challenge.

2012 still

There are a number of reasons for this, not least that the range of heuristics and biases which limit all of our abilities to accurately percieve risk (and which are partly shaped by movies). However, the aspect that I’m focusing on here relates to accessibility, by which I mean the ease of understanding information, not whether it’s available in large print and different languages.

To be clear, I don’t advocating “dumbing down” content, but I do think that there are ways of presenting information which facilitates it’s ease of use. Too often we conceptualise ‘the public’ as abstract dimwits with a reading age of 7 and no ability to have their own thoughts. I firmly oppose this stance and we should remember that “out there” are incredibly inteligent business people, entrepeneurs, professors, doctors and whole swathes of people exposed to complex information on a daily basis.

Having a lead responsibility for risk assessment in London means I spend much of my time thinking about how we can communicate risk information both to professional partners, but also to the public. We’ve certainly seen the Rise of the Infographic over the last couple of years, as shown in the Google Trends graph below. I’m currently playing with some thoughts on how this infographic approach could be used in the context of risk assessment.

Another recent approach that I’ve been trying recently is to avoid sending people directly to a risk register. A 40 page document doesn’t sound like something even I want to read, so why would anyone else? I discovered Prezi about 2 years ago, and have recently developed the presentation below to outline the London Risk Register. It’s already had nearly 1000 views, which is significantly more than the number of hits the London Risk Register has recieved. I’m not saying that’s an indicator of sucessful risk communication, but perhaps it indicates that proving risk information in a non traditional ways (by which I mean, not a document) is preferable?

Take a look, what do you think? Is this a more convienient way, for the public and community, to recieve risk information? Does it break down any of the barriers associated with traditional methods, or are people just interested in the novelty of Prezi’s zooming?

Image Credit: Columbia Pictures

Plague and Progress

Plague and Progress

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Following incidents responders undertake debriefs to identify lessons for the responder community; I’ve participated in and facilitated many such events. However, investigation of past disasters can also reveal information on how they were caused, contributing factors and identify options for prevention or mitigation – essentialy progress is (at least partly) driven by past experience.

black death

Cries of “make way for the Plague Doctor” were heard from the back of the auditorium as Dr Carole Reeves (UCL), in long coat, beaked mask and hat, made her way to the lectern. It’s safe to say that not all lectures start as dramatically as the one I attended today, entitled Plague Bones: how London’s Black Death became a tropical disease.

The Museum of London (arguably one of my favourites) has amassed quite the collection of bones, sourced from plague pits or during the construction of the London Underground, which are made available to researchers to help analysis of past events, including the Black Death.

As a term, “Black Death” didn’t arrive until relatively recently in the 19th Century, with “plague” or “pestilence” the terms in 14th Century vogue. As an emerging (or re emerging) infectious disease there was little or no inherent population immunity. It was therefore devastating.

At the time, Plague (Yersinia pestis) was seen as a sign of a displeased deity (interestingly, Islamic doctrine at the time was that Plague was the will of God and was to be endured). However, through providing ministry to the dying, the clergy had a higher degree of exposure and was one of the hardest hit populations, with 1 in 3 perishing.

Plague doctors, their leather beaks stuffed with herbs and spices to ward off evil airs, were in short supply in the Middle Ages. However, other professions rolled up their sleeves to provide diagnosis and treatment, notably barbers (have you noticed the red and white striped pole outside some barbers – this has it’s roots as an advertisement of the practice of bloodletting). Treatments of the day included purging, cupping, cauterisation and lancing. Some more outrageous suggestions were also suggested including placing a frog on the buboes, rubbing oneself with a chickens bottom, drinking snail tea or chopping up a puppy and applying it, still warm, to the victims chest.

On the authority of the Pope, top Parisian doctors concluded the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the sign of Aquarius in 1345 was the cause of the pestilence – causing the earth to “exhale poisonous vapors”. Offering some prescription, the same report advised:

No poultry should be eaten, no waterfowl, no pig, no old beef, altogether no fat meat. . . . It is injurious to sleep during the daytime. . . . Fish should not be eaten, too much exercise may be injurious . . . and nothing should be cooked in rainwater. Olive oil with food is deadly. . . . Bathing is dangerous.

With such helpful medical advice, it’s no wonder that people turned to religion and ritual; there was a strong reliance on charms and lighting of fires of juniper and rosemary to ward of the mal arias (or bad air, from which we get “malaria”).

The significant numbers of fatalities put extreme pressure on burial space, and in London, saw the construction of large emergency cemeteries, the final resting place of some 20,000 victims, some in coffins, but many in burial pits 6 deep.

Infections don’t emerge (or re-emerge) in a vacuum, their mutation is linked to climatic and, ecosystem factors, levels of health and immunity and coexisting infections. It’s thought that a contributory factor to the Black Death could have included a series of famines including The Great Famine 1315-1317, movement of military and opening of trade routes between Europe and Asia, and coexisting infections of tuberculosis, lice and intestinal parasites.

The modern plague doctor has a much more sophisticated range of tools at his disposal:

  • Border Biosecurity – ships suspected of coming from infected areas were turned away. Today, much effort goes into maintaining bio-secure borders – partly the reason that there are restrictions on what you can take on holiday with you
  • Containment – some settlements isolated themselves from the disease through isolation for 40 days (hence the term quarantine). Whilst this was only minimally effective at the time, containment was one of the response strategies during the 2009 Swine Flu Pandemic
  • Surveillance – absent in the Middle Ages, we now have vastly improved international schemes to monitor the epidemiology of human, animal, insect and plant diseases which mean that decisions can be taken much further in advance
  • Medical Treatments – a significant step on from the ‘frogs and dogs’ approach, with a continually developing understanding of the body, pharmacology and disease we now have access to a much better range of effective treatments
  • Protection – with advances in materials and understanding, we’re now able to protect ourselves against infections through hand and respiratory hygiene and barriers such as gloves and masks rather than beaked leather masks stuffed with herbs and spices.
  • General Health – again rooted in understanding of disease, the notion of germs and the rise of cleanliness, we now have access to clean water, flushing toilets and it’s difficult to imagine a situation where public health authorities recommend exercise being injurious!

plague doc modern doctor

Much of this has progress has been the result of learning stemming from past incidents. Whether the Black Death hundreds of years ago, or recent outbreaks of SARS, lessons from the past must continue to shape our preparedness for the future.

 

Image Credits: Corbis, Paul Fürst, Brian Thomas Humek,

Finding your way

Finding your way

Reading Time: 4 minutes

scout map badge

Having a sense of direction is important; more so when you’re not familiar with the area, or when it’s time critical that you leave.

Wherever you are right now, stop and indulge yourself in this little task

  1. Imagine there is an emergency and you are instructed to “go home or head North”
  2. Point in the direction of ‘home’.
  3. Point in the direction of North.
  4. Did you find that easy?

It became apparent on a recent holiday to Europe that some people struggle with this, but despite occasionally confusing left with right I’m able to get my bearings and navigate around fairly quickly and accurately. However, there will always be occasions when you need to find somewhere specific and therefore turn to a map for help. Increasingly this means tapping in a destination to a smartphone and following the directions, but there’s still the option of physical maps.

I expect that there is a lot of literature out there (like this) regarding the cognitive skills required to interpret maps, but thankfully it’s something which comes easily to me without much thought.

I had a quick think about how maps can be useful in a resilience context and came up with the following. I’m sure there are many more examples of how maps can be useful (perhaps I’ll come back to this at a later stage)

To appreciate risk – it’s fairly obvious to me that low-lying areas or those near lakes and rivers are likely to be more at risk from flooding

  • To find your way from A to B – this is probably the most obvious way that maps are useful, especially in an unfamiliar area.
  • Communicating information – being able to plot “the emergency is here” or “this road is blocked” can be much more effectively done with the aid of maps
  • To conduct a remote assessment – I need to get away from this hazard, but I know there is a steep hill/river/etc in this direction so I’ll go this way

Providing you know, and can interpret, what you’re looking at I find maps an extremely useful tool – which is why I get frustrated when they aren’t available (which seemed to be the case in both New York and Berlin!).

Having dropped out of Scouts a long time ago, I decided to take a look at their criteria. Would I still be able to obtain a Scouts badge for map reading?

  1. Understand how to use the key of an Ordnance Survey map                                 Yes, although I always get the Church symbols mixed up!
  2. Be able to use six-figure grid references                                                                    It’s been some time since I had to do this, but I’m confident I still could
  3. Explain how to find north on a map and how to set a map to north                               I wouldn’t have any difficulty with this, but ask me to convincingly use a compass and I’d be struggling
  4. Locate your home on an Ordnance Survey map                                                     This is my natural instinct when confronted with any map; where am I on this map (often this is marked on public maps)
  5. Understand contour lines on an Ordnance Survey map                                          Yes, having constructed a model of contours out of acetate at school, I think I’d be ok
  6. Be able to identify ten Ordnance Survey map symbols                                        Again, so long as it wasn’t differentiating between a Church with a tower and one with a steeple I’m confident about this
  7. Use an Ordnance Survey map during an outdoor activity                                              I haven’t done this in a long time – perhaps next time I’ll take one with me
  8. Know the first eight points of a compass and use them during an outdoor activity  “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”, in fact, I think I could get all the way to 16 compass points…but asking me to use one would be my downfall.

Ok , based on that I’m awarding myself the badge (I haven’t decided where to sew it yet!).

But to go back to an earlier point – with increased reliance on smartphones – are we increasingly vulnerable? With some smartphone mapping systems not being as accurate as you’d expect, and the ever possible risk that your phone will run out of battery, it’s vital that we don’t become too reliant on them.

Here’s my thoughts on being resilient in the absence of a map. If you’ve got any additional thoughts or experiences, drop them in the comments box below.

  • Ask someone – it always makes me happy when I’m able to direct someone in the right direction
  • Educated guess – I generally know the broad direction that I’m travelling, or the direction of home – I’ve been known to walk in a direction until I get to a known landmark or road

Going back to the Scouts, given their motto is “Be Prepared”, perhaps there are other scouting skills which could have a resilience application. I’ll have a look at what other badges I could award myself soon!

 

Image source: The Scout Association

#gpdrr13 – my thoughts

#gpdrr13 – my thoughts

Reading Time: 2 minutes

[I’ll be adding to this post as the #gpdrr13 continues during this week]

I was introduced to the Hyogo Framework for Action many years ago by Phillip Buckle, but working in the UK, I haven’t had much call to use it directly. However, the Civil Contigencies Act is a clear example of where legislation has enabled some action towards acheivement of the Millennium Development Goals.

gpdrr

Interestingly, it seems like legislation isn’t the only aspect whcih seems to influence the ability of countries to implement HFA; with discussions at the plenary session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction this afternoon, revealing some other challenges. I was however, more interested to see the future direction of HFA2, and specifically, I noted the following.

Transboundary Risks

Margareta Wahlström mentioned that the most used word of the day was local – whilst that’s undoubtedly important, there should also be a recognition of ‘global village’ risks.

In July 2012 the Emilia Romagna earthquake hit the headlines for a variety of reasons. One of which was a shortage of dialysis tubing in the UK as a result of disruption to manufacturing in Italy. So in addition to our systems being complexly linked to each other, they’re also increasingly linked internationally.

Another example of this was the recent horse meat scandal. It quickly became apparent that the products that we buy on the shelves have often travelled far and wide. This complexity is a feature of modern life but understanding it means that we’re better prepared when there is a problem.

Role of Science

There’s that old addage that to manage something you have to be able to measure it. Data accessibility is a considerable challenge in disaster management. There are attempts to classify and codify disasters and record their impact in terms of fatalities and economic cost. However they’re all open to interpretation (often being drawn from secondary sources or entries only included where a nation has declared a National Emergency), and it’s by no means a complete record.

This makes the process of risk assessment and learning from past incidents challenging.

Data and science were also mentioned in terms of developing models experiments, tools and technology to assist in prevention, detection, response and recovery. And the need to integrate human sciences as well as physical sciences was specifically highlighted.

Community

I think it’s a given that we all recognise that disasters affect communities. What seems to be more challenging is to engage those communities in disaster risk reduction work. If experience internationally is anything like my experience in the UK, there’s actually a precursor question about the identification of these communities.

It was noted that there should be effort towards developing closer association between public and private sector and I was interested in a presentation from Japanese colleagues regarding the role of sport in developing resilience.

The other aspect that was flagged for inclusion of minority groups, gender issues, and impacts of demographic changes to be at the centre of disaster risk reduction policies and HFA2.

Anytown Unleashed

Anytown Unleashed

Reading Time: < 1 minute

For the last 4 months I’ve been spearheading a project known as Anytown. The project aims to help develop better understanding and awareness of how different ‘city systems’ all interlink. Today I unleashed my baby into the world at Defra’s Community Resilience & Climate Change Workshop. Read more on the project below.

When you throw a stone in a pond, ripples propagate from the centre. Similarly in emergencies and disasters, impacts of an initiating event can propagate and cause a cascade of consequences. There are many examples of this both in the UK and overseas, yet there has been little formal consideration of it to date.

The intention of Anytown is to simplify reality and model the interconnections and interdependencies between systems in order to provide a greater level of awareness of these potential impacts.

During my studies we had an assignment involving ‘Complex Cascading Disasters’ and I remember at the time, that there was little readily available research in this area. That situation hasn’t changed significantly so in February, I coordinated a number of workshops bringing together over 100 representatives from 52 organisations to discuss and harvest their knowledge and experience.

Looking back to my ripple analogy earlier, from the workshop data I created ‘ripple diagrams’ which demonstrate how consequences cascade from an incident through various sectors.

Anytown is now free into the world. This is exciting as one of the key aspects that I realised during the development is that a model is only as good as the information that feeds it – so now many more people have the opportunity to contribute. I’ll bring occasional updates on the progress of Anytown as I move from the model development (hopefully) towards visualisation and simulation.

The ‘work’ version of this post is over here

Influ-Venn-Za

Influ-Venn-Za

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’m all about infographics (who isn’t these days?) and recently found this one which describes who can catch the many strains of flu.

Following a recent post on the emerging H7N9 influenza situation in the Far East I thought I’d just post this as a quick update. Enjoy!

Influ-Venn-Za


Image Source: informationisbeautiful.net

 

Rooted in Resilience

Rooted in Resilience

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This was originally posted on the London Prepared Blog, I’ve slightly adapted the original to cater for the audience of this blog.

This week is London Tree Week, part of RE:LEAF – the initiative to help protect and increase the number of trees in London.London park

Far from just standing there, trees offer many benefits from a resilience perspective. Here I investigate the important role that trees play in developing our own resilience to emergencies:

  • Trees stabilise our soils and slopes – the root systems of trees, and other plants, hold together soils which would otherwise be gradually washed away by rainwater. Elsewhere in the world, trees offer protection against avalanches and landslips.
  • Trees reduce flash flooding– the tree canopy intercepts rainfall which reduces the rate at which rainwater hits the ground, this reduces the likelihood of surface water flooding.
  • Trees provide a buffer to extreme temperatures – on average forested land is 2-4 degrees cooler in the summer and 1-2 degrees warmer in the winter. This means they are natural helpers in our preparations to reduce the impact of Heatwaves and episodes of snow and ice.
  • Trees reduce wind speeds – which can be a major source of building damage. Thanks to building regulations, large-scale damage or destruction is unlikely to occur as a result of wind speeds in the UK, but is has caused issues internationally.
  • Trees reduce pollution – as well as their role in converting carbon dioxide to oxygen (which is important in reducing the rate of climate change), tress also help remove sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which are major components of acid rain. Have you noticed those trees with the patchy bark? The London Plane tree is type of sycamore which was extensively planted in Victorian London. When the pores of the tree trunk get clogged with pollutants, the tree sheds its bark, escorting the pollutants to the sewer system.

Downed trees and branches can impact on power lines or block roads, which can cause disruption. However it’s worth thinking about how much worse the disruption or damage could be if the tree hadn’t taken the brunt of the force.

For balance, it’s important to realise that trees can also contribute to, or provide a habitat for, some risks:

  • In late 2012 scientists at the Food & Environment Research Agency (FERA) confirmed a number of cases of Ash Dieback, which can cause tree death, across Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent and Essex
  • In 2006 the Oak Processionary Moth caterpillar was confirmed on trees in the London Borough of Richmond following an incidence of skin rash symptoms among local residents. There has since been a spread of this caterpillar to different areas of London.

However, if we make sure that trees are properly looked after and maintained, then they offer a range of hidden benefits which make us more resilient to many kinds of emergency.

 

Image Source: mtthwhgn.com