Observed and operational
Records and services that can be checked against their primary sources.
Keep life going.
Prepare for disruption.
Reliable water, energy, food, shelter and practical skills help communities through difficult times. The wider ambition is to preserve those foundations, our knowledge and our choices for future generations.
Check what the evidence supports
Related research projects examine everyday disruptions, large-scale hazards and more speculative possibilities. Observations, models and disputed explanations need to be clearly labelled. Their inclusion here does not mean a particular disaster has been predicted.
Modelled and contested
Explicit assumptions, competing explanations and tests that might change an assessment.
Exploratory horizons
Long-term designs and imaginative scenarios labelled so they do not impersonate observations.
Prepare for needs that many disruptions share
Different events can interrupt the same essentials. Water storage, repair skills, reliable communications and backup power can be worth examining without agreeing on every possible cause. Real plans need to be checked against local conditions.
| Capability | Question carried into the business network |
|---|---|
| Energy that can operate independently | What essential work continues when an external supply fails? |
| Water held, treated and cycled | What storage, treatment, power and expertise does continuity require? |
| Food and repair | What can be produced, stored, maintained and repaired locally? |
| Knowledge that stays | What records, methods and skills remain usable without the network? |
| Protective shelter | Which actual conditions is the structure designed and validated to withstand? |
| People who already know one another | Who has practised the relationships and handovers before a disruption? |
Sources for this section
Check what the backups depend on
Businesses in different towns might still rely on the same software, supplier or communications network. A backup plan should examine those shared dependencies and test whether an alternative really works.
Sources for this section
D03 · A Fair Go for the AI Age D04 · Do Not Put All Our Eggs in One Basket
Keep useful skills and equipment in the community
A business handover could preserve trades, tools, food supply connections and practical knowledge. Improvements could also help the business cope with disruption. Any extra work would need an agreed budget and responsibilities.