Weather extremes are now a corporate priority

Lee Copland, Managing Director, Maxxess EMEA

Across all our markets we are seeing heads of risk, business continuity and facilities managers looking to build resilience against extreme weather events – hardly surprising given the news of the last few weeks.

In 2021 we have already seen numerous examples of records being broken for rainfall, droughts, wildfires, and temperature extremes. What has been most striking is the increased frequency and unpredictability of these events.

The heat dome that bloomed over the US in June and July – causing hundreds of people to die in cities including Seattle and Portland – broke previous temperature records by an unheard of 10F (5.5C) margin in some of the affected communities. This is escalation that has surprised the best climatologists and called into question previous assumptions about what we should expect.

Surface water flooding is another example that we’ve seen dramatically made real in the last few weeks, with flash floods now presenting a danger to locations previously assumed to be safe.

In July, a stationery system of storms caused flash-flooding in Benelux, Switzerland, and Germany, devastating communities and killing hundreds of people. It had passed over London hours before and caused localised disruption but not major loss of life because of a simple fluke: the clouds had kept moving and had not been blocked by high pressure.

Temperatures in Algeria, Turkey, and parts southern Europe continue to soar above 40C, causing deadly wildfires, with sea surface temperatures across most parts of Europe at around 3-6C above normal, signalling the risk of further flooding toward the end of the summer and into autumn.

We are seeing increased, localised, and more random impacts of extreme weather, so for most major organisations climate change is no longer viewed as a theoretical risk on the 20- or 30-year horizon, but is something real and much closer to hand.

We can’t be sure what the impact of more extreme weather is going to be, but we can be certain that corporate infrastructures and systems – like wider economies – are going to be tested in new ways.

Which is why we are seeing increasing numbers of security and facilities managers shift their focus on the safety of staff and visitors as well as enhancing the protection of critical assets and property with flexible and scalable technology to build resilience and preparedness.  The good news is that we can look to many of the tried and tested principles developed to help cope with other risks – from major accidents to terrorism, from power outages to disrupted supply chains.

The same technologies and operating procedures that allow organisations to pivot and adapt during these emergencies can be applied to reducing the impact of extreme weather on staff, visitors, customers, and facilities.

Streamlined systems – combining fire and safety, visitor management, building controls, HR systems and other core business processes – have proven themselves particularly over the last eighteen months of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the latest access control and visitor management software integrated with video has allowed facilities to be managed remotely, used more flexibly and – importantly – more securely.  Automating processes has taken pressure off frontline security staff such as teams at reception desks and gatehouses, yet allowed employees and contractors to move between locations as the need arises. It has also given security teams greater control and visibility over site access and occupancy

Integrating stand-alone, siloed systems is going to be even more important as businesses look to prepare for extreme weather events against a continuing backdrop of COVID-19, as offices and campuses reopen.

Integrating key management systems and asset tagging to standardise and streamline processes has already proved to be integral to preparedness and business continuity.

For example, a common challenge for many businesses, is managing keys to storage areas and ensuring staff can use portable equipment, because both often get lost or misplaced. The larger the facility, the more notoriously hard it is to identify who last had keys or used a specific piece of equipment. To operate sites safely and securely, it’s now more important to give facilities teams rapid access to the right areas and equipment at the right time, whether they are responding to wildfires, flooding, sandstorms, or gritting car parks and walkways.

By integrating access control with key management systems, facilities managers can allow secure and timed access to storage areas, giving authorised staff access to resources, machinery, vehicles, and specialist equipment such as fire suppression appliances, gritting machines, snow ploughs or specialist water pumps.

Asset tracking can be added, allowing equipment to be secured yet quickly located and deployed when needed, while introducing higher levels of user accountability and responsibility.

Integrating video adds another layer of security, with cameras taking a snapshot of every access event and providing a visual audit trail. The latest surveillance cameras also provide control room operators and facilities managers with essential high-definition visual verification as well as powerful AI-powered notifications allowing them to verify and assess risks and make informed decisions faster.

At the same time, an integrated approach makes it easier for organisations to standardise processes across their estates to protect and safeguard property, assets, and staff, particularly where there are strict procedures to ensure regulatory and health and safety compliance.

For example, engineers can be given access to keys, to power down electricity in the event of a flood, while at the same time access control functionality such as mustering can ensure a facility or part of facility is safely evacuated, while door lockdowns can help protect critical assets. Keys are then returned to a secure cabinet and, once a facility is deemed safe, they can be used again to power the mains and ensure critical business activities are resumed as quickly as possible.

The move towards unified management platforms also means that control room operators can be guided by step-by-step through standard operating procedures for a range of different events, while triggering automated audio and instructions to building occupants and alerting supervisors, department managers and remote workers via email, SMS, and mobile apps.   Not only does this improve compliance it increases productivity when it comes to managing sites and responding to everyday security and safety events. And importantly, it ensures a coordinated response to extreme weather events.

Where multi-tenanted buildings are concerned, that can mean different operating procedures and responses can be customised for individual organisations and risk profiles, but still managed flexibly under an umbrella system.  Streamlined systems, being easier to operate, are more resilient and they give users the flexibility to integrate a range of third of party systems and IoT sensors to further support resilience and preparedness.

Overall, we are seeing corporate risk teams investing in a range of technologies that enable better communications, improved situational awareness, faster and more effective response, and more efficient team and resource coordination.

Where multiple dispersed sites have to be managed, and for organisations with a global footprint, the risk of weather events impacting one or more locations increases. For these organisations more powerful centralised control will help to manage that risk by allowing targeted, localised responses while providing an audit trail of events for compliance and to foster a culture of continuous improvement when it comes to responding to weather events.

And while the big challenge of mitigating the risks can only be tackled by governments at an international level – they must now find, or at least try to find, ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and so limit future damage.

But even if they succeed in keeping average temperature rises to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, experts warn that the major impacts we are now starting to see are already ‘baked-in’. Whatever happens at COP26 in Glasgow later this year, temperatures are going up and the disruptive effects are going to increase.

And the warning from scientists is that global weather patterns are now entering a phase of accelerating change that organisations have not previously had to plan for, or deal with.

So, there’s no question that corporate resilience needs to be tested and improved. The assumption should be that dangerous impacts of climate change will not be felt by the middle of the century, or by 2040, but this decade. And perhaps this year.