This snapshot, taken on 05/12/2011, shows web content selected for preservation by The National Archives. External links, forms and search boxes may not work in archived websites.
Telecommunications are a fundamental enabler underpinning the effective response to any emergency. Resilient communications are able to absorb or mitigate the effects of a disruptive challenge. A disruptive challenge is an event or circumstances that disrupts normal life. These can be natural events such as flooding, or may have occurred through human intervention such as an electrical power failure or terrorist incident.
Elsewhere, we provide advice on how to set about enhancing the resilience of telecommunications you may currently use and information about additional resilient telecommunications capability such as HITS (the High Integrity Telecommunications System), the NRE (National Resilience Extranet) and MTPAS (Mobile Telecoms Privileged Access Scheme).
Experience during a number of recent emergencies in the UK such as the BT plc tunnel fire in Manchester (April 2004), floods in Boscastle (August 2004) and Carlisle (January 2005), and the bombings in London (July 2005) all showed that communication systems could be disrupted in an emergency and that emergency planning needed to take that into account.
A number of generic challenges to business continuity have been identified through the national risk register. Drawing on experience and risk assessment work we believe that these generic challenges, adapted as necessary to local circumstances, should be used as the framework for testing the resilience of responder communications.
To help us understand your needs and improve our website, please fill out this questionnaire. The survey should take 1-2 minutes to complete.
