Count me as one long arguing for more in-country researchers to study China’s high-speed rail (HSR)–a system far more ambitious than other nations combined. The aim: to identify HSR practices with respect to system reliability and safety management in the hope of learning more cross-nationally. HSR accidents occur, and big ones, but China’s system is reported to have been managed with high levels of reliability and safety in the last decade.
I
Now I want to suggest extending that research agenda to the management of the interconnections between HSR systems and other major critical infrastructures in China.
HSR is part of China’s transportation network, which has been estimated to also include5 million kilometres of road and 230 major airports. How does HSR interface with them? HSR requires electricity and it’s also reported that China deploys over 275 gigawatts of wind-power capacity, by way of example. What are its interconnections with HSR? HSR includes a great deal of automation and software. Yet according to one source, by the beginning of 2024 only some 40 of the over 235 large language models (LLM) introduced in China had been approved by the regulators. How does the under-regulation of generative AI affect HSR and its other infrastructure interconnections, if at all?
II
The point of the preceding scatter-shot questions is not to highlight the numbers—there must be much better estimates out there–but rather the need for a frameworks centered on infrastructure interconnectivity that guide what sorts of questions to ask and answer in the first place and by way of priority.
As I neither speak nor read Mandarin and am unable to access the research and modeling of Chinese researchers on this matter, I offer below what is hopefully a suggestive alternative: insights from recent research Paul Schulman and I have been undertaking on the interconnected lifeline infrastructures of roads, telecoms, water and electricity.
Combined with earlier research, our framework covers multiple modes of infrastructure operations, including those during normal, disrupted, and failed periods, followed by immediate emergency response and initial service restoration, longer-term recovery, and the establishment of a new normal (if there is to be one),
Below focuses on the framework’s implications for “immediate emergency response and initial service restoration,” a topic of international concern, and not just in China. Of specific focus are “known errors” and “infrastructure vulnerabilities” with respect to that immediate response and restoration. This following three short sections are pitched at a general level, with specifics to China provided by way a short conclusion.
III
To talk about known errors and vulnerabilities to avoid seems incongruous in the context of the pervasive uncertainties found in the midst of major disasters. Real-time surprises and shocks are frequent in flooding, wildfires, earthquakes, and disease outbreaks, among other major disruptions and failures.
Also well-documented, however, is the urgency, clarity and logic about what to do by way of just-in-time interventions in some of these cases. Despite surprises, sequences of action in these instances are clear, urgent and known to front-line staff; and with them, certain errors to be avoided are also evident as well as the vulnerabilities posed if not avoided beforehand. This is especially true when it comes to known sequences with respect to restoring electricity, water, telecoms and roads after, say, an earthquake.
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Vulnerabilities arise because the interconnectivities between and among infrastructures, when shifting from latent before an emergency to manifest during and after the disaster, can well invalidate existing response planning and preparedness. The emergency changes or multiplies the range of contacts, communications and negotiations required to produce new and unforeseen options to respond. Where and when so, infrastructures are by definition under-prepared and under-resourced to match their capabilities to their demands.
More specifically with respect to known errors:
- Under conditions of such changed interconnectivity, it would be an error for infrastructure operators and emergency managers not to establish lateral communications with one another and undertake improvisational and shared restoration activities where needed, even if no official arrangement exists to do so.
- In addition to these front-line errors, there are also errors of anticipation and planning. In particular, it would be a management error not to provide robust and contingent inter-infrastructure communication capabilities, including phone connections between the control rooms of interconnected infrastructures. This communication, it has been demonstrated, is greatly facilitated by establishing lateral inter-infrastructure personnel contacts prior to emergencies
- It would also be an error not to have some contingent resources for restoration and initial recovery activities such as lorries, portable generators and movable cell towers in differing locations that would be made available across infrastructures if needed, particularly where chokepoints of interconnected infrastructures are adjacent to each other.
There are other known errors, but the above three are sufficient to draw important implications with regard to inter-infrastructural vulnerabilities to be anticipated before, during and after a disaster.
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Four of the significant implications are:
1. Avoiding these known errors are not to be equated to “risk management.” Indeed, they should have their very own, different funding sources and programs.
2. That earmarked funding should be allocated to already existing units and organizations focused on interconnectivities between and among infrastructures. In our experience, this means focusing well beyond the official emergency management structures at the local, regional and national levels. Instead, you are looking for existing initiatives that have already “seen the light” by focusing on interconnectivities in their own right and right from the start.
3. Typical discussions of infrastructure vulnerabilities focus on physical components, like corrosion in gas pipelines. The vulnerabilities of interest here, however, begin when the interconnected infrastructures fail to anticipate the need for these special capacities in those cases of shifting or shifted interconnectivities, like the need for lateral communications beyond official channels as a known error to avoid.
4. Without prior contacts, communication channels and contingent resources already in place beforehand, the infrastructures will focus on their own intra-infrastructure priorities, tasks and responsibilities in the emergency. If inter-infrastructural connectivities are instead a priority, real-time corrections are hampered by lack of prior error avoidance and attention.
VI
So what, with respect to China?
Four obvious questions, for which I don’t pretend to have any kind of answer, are:
–Do existing institutions facilitate lateral communications and horizontal micro-coordination even if (especially if) they occur outside official emergency management infrastructures, be they in rural or urban areas?
–Are formal and informal communications systems robust even when baseline telecoms are down, be they in rural or urban areas?
–Are repositories of key infrastructure back-ups readily available, particularly where chokepoints of two or more infrastructures are co-located in urban or rural areas?
–Are existing initiatives focused on vulnerabilities of interconnected infrastructures in the face of urban or rural disasters supported not only by funds and staff, but new information and findings?
Note by this point, in case it needs saying, that in none of this am I suggesting the focus start, let alone, end with the HSR system.
My thanks to Paul Schulman for working out and providing some of the wording . Any errors still remain mine.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 