Concurrency in Crisis

Concurrency – ‘existing or happening at the same time’ is the definition articulated in the pages of Oxford English Dictionary. In my world and in simple terms - More than one incident, happening at the same time – maybe different in nature but each one of which could have critical implications on one or more of the Emergency Services ability to deliver. Within the world of Threat & Risk it is an issue usually overlooked and almost always unwelcome. Why is that? Simply really – it’s a tough challenge that is difficult to deal with and if you work in Government, even more so. A challenge that in a world where money is tight and ‘High Impact – Low Threat’ risks are plentiful – it is easy to see why many Governments across the globe, choose to simply ‘carry’ certain significant risks in the hope they never happen. 

This short article is to outline an argument and business case for every organisation in every sector to have emergency plans in place. To test them, exercise them and review the plans regularly. To ensure staff understand those plans and have contingencies in place to facilitate a level of business continuity and to look at concurrency. To organisationally learn from the crisis we are currently involved in and ensure that going forward, your own organisations are better Protected and Prepared when whatever incident happens. It is also designed to challenge individuals having too many core skills.....all of which may be required at the same time!

Concurrent Attacks

I thought it would be interesting to look at how many Terrorist Attacks I could find since January this year – particularly relevant given the world for (at least the last couple of months) is languishing a village called ‘Isolation’...amidst a far-reaching, global viral attack....

January 2020 (7 incidents) – mainly in Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia but also in in France where a man stabbed three people in Villejuif, a suburb of Paris, killing one person and wounding two others. The attacker was shot dead by police. The attacker was identified as Nathan Chiasson, a follower of salafism, an extremist sect of Islam. 

Also, in the UK where on the day of Brexit, the Police Service of Northern Ireland was given two anonymous tips that a bomb inside a lorry would be on a ferry heading from Belfast Harbour to Cairnryan, Scotland. On 5 February 2020, the bomb was found inside a lorry in Lurgan, County Armagh. The police believe the Continuity IRA was responsible for the failed bomb attack

February 2020 (12 incidents) – Ethiopia, Canada, Somalia, Maldives, Israel, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Pakistan but also London where a man stabbed three people in Streatham, London, seriously wounding one. The attacker was shot dead by Metropolitan Police authorised firearms officers outside the doors of a Boots store on Streatham High Road. The attacker, identified as Sudesh Mamoor Faraz Amman, was recently released from prison, after serving a sentence for terror offences. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

And finally, in France where a police officer was injured when stabbed by an Islamic State sympathiser.

March 2020 (6 incidents) – Afghanistan, Iraq, Chad, Nigeria and Mali

April 2020 (so far – 5 incidents) – Cameroon, Mali, Mozambique and the Philippines. Also, in France where two people were killed and five others wounded in a mass stabbing in Romans-sur-Isère, France. The suspect is a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker who was arrested at the scene. French police have launched a terrorism investigation. Two other people related to the attacker were arrested later.

Add to the above, non-Terrorist related incidents like mass shootings in the USA (Don’t open this link unless you are prepared to be scared of the enormity). 

Pivotal Services during Crisis

All of the above have taken place at a time when our global Police Services, Fire & Rescue and particularly health responses are stretched to transparently thin levels due to the concurrent COVID 19 pandemic. As we have now all also come to appreciate (as a direct result of COVID virus), that we must also add another list of hugely important organisations to the above list of emergency services. How many times since we have all been in isolation, do we hear of and need;

·      The Financial Sector

·      Logistics Sector

·      Retail Sector

....I could go on! As sectors they are hugely important for the entire world to simply exist during crisis. With regards to the financial sector, if we don’t allow them to do their thing the global economy will take even longer to recover than is already predicted to do. We have to eat, and the shops need to be full for us to do that...this isn’t rocket science!!

Concurrency & Complexity

Let's assume 5 friends have moved into a house and each has a bed to make. Which is the more complex way to organise this?

• 5 people assembling one bed at the same time
• each person assembling their own bed

Think about how to write instructions for several of your friends on how to assemble a bed together, without holding each other up or having to wait for tools. They would need to coordinate their actions at the right time to assemble the parts of a bed into a finished bed. Those instructions would be really complicated, hard to write and probably hard to read, too. With each person building their own bed, the instructions are very simple, and no one has to wait for other people to finish or for tools to be available.

Double & Triple Hatting

This is a very real problem. Certainly, in the UK and from my experience globally this is equally an issue. But what does the phrase mean? 

In the context of the emergency services (Police, Fire, Ambulance, Military), stereotypically a certain sort of person joins these organisations. That person likes to attend courses (lots of them), loves the idea of having lots of sexy kit issued to them and which improves their chances and potential to earn much more cash because they possess a range of skillsets that are hugely useful and inevitably needed – especially at times of crisis. 

Add to that, almost all of the organisations named above attempt to save money by not training as many people as they should (or are being paid to do by Government) and then using that money elsewhere. These same organisations cannot always get enough people to do certain courses (the course may be dangerous or not appealing to staff) and so they allow people who already possess a very important skill, to be trained in another or even a third very important skill. Even worse, people get trained in a certain skill (to bolster numbers) when the reality is, they will never use that skill or make themselves available to be used. 

If you have a number of key, core skills (double/triple hatted) then if during crisis all your skills are needed at the same time – you simply can’t do everything at once. 

Planning for Catastrophic.

All of the emergency services operate to an agreed set of generic operating principles and all of them work to agreed planning assumptions. If they didn’t, then the Police, Fire and Ambulance Service (in the UK) would not be able to inter-operate at the same level, or with such a fabulous joint response as they do, when dealing with incidents. Within the world of CBRN, this is particularly true. Chemical, Biological, Radiological & Nuclear incidents are by their nature, (expected to be) catastrophic. But is there a point in attempting to plan for something when there is for all intent and purpose little chance of success? My contention is that planning for less of an incident allows process to work, accepts the true nature and difficulty associated with dealing with the incident effectively and also allows for ‘concurrency’ to be taken into account. Rarely do significant incidents come in ones!

Protect & Prepare Ltd has literally decades of multi-agency preparedness experience both domestically and internationally. Whether it be Police, Fire, Ambulance, Military or indeed private sector business and the community, we can help with your resilience planning, business continuity and deal with complex issues such as ‘concurrency’. 

Mark Scoular - Director

Protect & Prepare Ltd