Planning for Black Swan Events is Easy!

Black Swan events are typically events that are random or rare but with high impact.  They routinely bring about drastic changes to programs and operations.  There are many definitions and explanations of these events, all with a different spin.  It can be thought of as a massive nationwide event or a business event specific to your company's operation.

One columnist includes economic events in his overarching list of disaster events that would destroy the already fragile economy.  Snyder invokes an interesting thought, perhaps a severe economic collapse, similar to Greece, would be a black swan event requiring long term continuity and drastic changes to day to day operations.

From the USS COLE to 9/11 to a wide spread power outage affecting 50% of the Nation, Black Swans have become a planning icon.

To this point, one writer indicates community EM planners and BC planners have become focused on planning towards black swan events rather than developing response capabilities.  I believe he is correct.  He goes on indicating that many times, during after action reports and lesson learned events, people become experts in those events, but miss the affects of the events.  For example, many people reviewing the Oklahoma City Bombing were focused on the bomb and completely missed the response efforts.  While it is critical to prevent those incidents where we can, but it is equally important to efficiently respond to them and the cascading affects.

I can attest that a major clients agrees with this thought pattern.  One of their operational plans evaluates three major, catastrophic (almost black swan) events.  In this plan, the event is separated from the effects.  It then focuses on responding to the effects rather than the event itself.  For example, the plan doesn't address a hurricane, it focuses on flooding, damaged infrastructure, and a massive loss of power.  The plan components can be utilized as needed.  This allows the client to use the same plan for many different events.  The plan used for a dam or levee break would be the same as a hurricane even though they are very different events.

This paradigm shift in emergency and disaster planning is rapidly becoming the norm.  It allows rapid and flexible responses to incidents, from tiny to massive black swan events.  I challenge you, if you are a planner, ask yourself, which is easier to plan for, the event, or the effects?  Chances are, if you strip away everything, you might be able to consolidate your recovery/response plans.  Building a flexible plan is the start to becoming resilient.