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The Topic: Resilience UTILITY WEEK | 12TH - 18TH FEBRUARY 2016 | 9 RESILIENCE THE TOPIC T hink of resilience and you are likely to picture engineers battling the elements to keep the lights on, prevent flooding, and keep gas flowing, especially aer the UK has been battered by a series of winter storms. However, resilience is about much more than just this. It also security of supply and supply chain risks. Furthermore, companies must be financially resilient and resilient in the face of political uncertainty. They must be aware of their vulnerability to physical and cyber crimes and alert to the emerging resilience risks that accompany popula- tion growth, demographic shis and new demand patterns. Then there's resilience in the face of skills gaps and the demand for capabilities in the workforce which did not exist in the recent past. In short, becoming resilient can seem like fighting a hydra which attacks from a new angle every second and sprouts new heads just as you think you are winning. Utility regulators are increasingly aware of resilience challenges, especially given the social and economic devastation that failure of water and energy supply would entail. In 2014 the government introduced a resilience duty for Ofwat and in the same year Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change commissioned a Science and Tech- nology Select Committee inquiry into the resilience of the UK electricity system. The resulting report, published last spring, urged the creation of a whole system view – that we might better understand and respond to the many vulnerabilities identified. It's an Resilience is an increasingly urgent challenge that takes many forms objective that is being actively pursued today by the Institution for Engineering and Tech- nology and the Energy Systems Catapult, which will issue more news and recommen- dations for energy system resilience in May. Utility companies need to be able to inter- pret what new perspectives on resilience mean for them – and to assure sharehold- ers, customers and regulators that they have mitigation and adaptation plans in place. With this goal in mind, the following pages present a range of views on resilience chal- lenges. Resilience is also a major theme at Utility Week Live, the sector's show, being held in Birmingham on 17-18 May. Water resilience taskforce: Resilience is the ability to cope with, and recover from, disrup- tion, and anticipate trends and variability in order to maintain services and protect the natural environment now and in the future. Ofwat: The resilience duty, bestowed upon the regulator in the 2014 Water Act is: (a) to secure the long-term resilience of water undertakers' supply systems and sewerage undertakers' sewerage systems as regards environmental pressures, population growth and changes in consumer behaviour, and (b) to secure that undertakers take steps for the purpose of enabling them to meet, in the long term, the need for the supply of water and the provision of sewerage services to consumers. Oxford English Dictionary: The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness Decc: Being prepared for emergencies and able to respond, endure and recover from emergencies of all kinds. Defra: The ability of the industry to absorb and adapt to "acute" disturbances which do not change underlying market conditions. WHAT DOES 'RESILIENCE' MEAN TO YOU? WHAT'S IN THIS ARTICLE? l Global risk, p10 l Water resilience, p12 l Cyber resilience, p13 l Energy network resilience, p15 l Demand side response, p16