EU infrastructure risk project to address potential climate, 'resource' shortage catastrophes

Atos is leading the Sunrise project that aims to develop measures to protect vital European infrastructure against the impact of incidents with catastrophic consequences, including future pandemics, climate change or resource scarcity. The multinational IT services outfit said it is to coordinate a group of 41 public and …

[elsergiovolador]

Choo choo

Aboard the gravy train!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Choo choo

How do I get on one of these gravy trains?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Choo choo

Find your way in to one of gentleman's clubs. Spend years building trust until someone hands you the train timetable.

[AMBxx]

Re: Choo choo

It's that wonderful combination of not enough money to achieve anything worthwhile but enough for a good party.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Choo choo

I'm hoping it is enough money for people to at least identify the main risks and write down a plan for what to do if those things happen. €11M Euros spent now could well be the alternative to spending €11Bn after the fact because you had no plans for things like evacuation, flood walls, security fences, and so on.

Mitigation is often orders of magnitude cheaper than remediation. (For instance, from an IT perspective, if you have a secure off-site backup, you don't have to re-enter all your customer details into the database by hand, or write off the business, when your server room floods or burns down)

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you plan for pandemics? Do you you automate everything as you can't stop people getting sick? Maybe introduce workhouses to avoid infections, There you go I just saved them a fortune. On the climate side it was only a matter of time before it got outsourced. It'll run over budget and be too late to actually do anything but at least someone will get the sploff loads of cash at it for their mates.

[elsergiovolador]

How do you plan for pandemics?

Establish contacts with organisations working on viruses, maybe pay for a subscription to the service where they tell when the next virus will be released etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some crazy tin foil hat thinking. I like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 3 years have been serious tin foil hat territory but an alarming amount has come out as true.

[Elongated Muskrat]

1. Stockpile PPE as a sensible contingency, then sell it off as a cost-saving exercise and to get some quick income to make it look like brexit is working, just before an actual pandemic hits.

2. Then pass out contracts for quick production of substandard replacement PPE in a mad rush to your mates at overinflated prices.

3. Profit

edit - The Paris icon has been gone for some time. Can we replace it with a "Michelle Mone on a yacht" icon instead?

[EvilDrSmith]

According to Channel 4, most of the stockpile had life-expired.

Also, there was a claim made (I think on Politico, about the time that the Pandemic hit Europe) that Germany had destroyed huge quantities of PPE just as the pandemic started in China, which rather destroys your attempt to blame Brexit

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar things happened in the US with HUGE stockpiles of PPE found sitting out in the rain.

[Elongated Muskrat]

The pandemic contingency plan did include things like replacing the stock as it expired, and storing it properly. Are you telling me it's a pure coincidence that this plan was cancelled in 2019, just at the time when our government were desperate to make it look like a "brexit windfall" existed?

The reason most of our stockpile had expired was precisely because it wasn't being maintained. Whether this was directly down to brexit, or just the lack of basic human-level comprehension exhibited by the tory government is fairly moot; it's all the same syndrome of lies and bluster.

A trivial internet search turns up several articles about how the preparedness plan was binned in 2019, such as this one:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18515726.covid-19-boris-johnson-binned-pandemic-team-months-crisis/

which contains the following gem:

The Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingency Committee (THRCC) was designed to ensure the UK was prepared for a pandemic – but it was mothballed by former Tory leader Theresa May so the Government could focus on Brexit efforts.

[EvilDrSmith]

Develop a Pandemic Response Plan

For example this one, that the UK government prepared in 2010

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/responding-to-a-uk-flu-pandemic

Or this update from 2014

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pandemic-influenza-response-plan

so that when a pandemic hits, you get out the plan, and follow the carefully thought out actions that everyone agreed should be taken.

What you shouldn't do is mostly ignore the plan and do what any/every other country is doing (and particularly not do what the totalitarian government that originally tried to cover up the start of the pandemic is doing), just because the media are doing everything they can do to cause panic.

Beyond that, yes, build a stock of PPE, and ensure that the emergency stock is actually rotated through for day-to-day use so that it stays in date.

Identify 'strategic suppliers' of PPE or whatever else, to identify maximum production capability, how quickly that can be ramped up to from normal production.

Develop response plans for the NHS (other national health services are available), such that there is a sensible procedure for discharging from hospital patients that are predominantly 'social care' patients that doesn't make it likely that these patients will seed the pandemic into countless old peoples homes (or better yet, address fundamental failings in social care provision).

Etc, etc.

[Elongated Muskrat]

...and what you definitely shouldn't do is bin the plan that has been devised to tackle the thing that has been identified as the highest risk and most likely threat, in order to save money, because "it hasn't happened yet".

It's a bit like cancelling your car insurance to save money, so you can afford some beers to drink while you're doing doughnuts in the local Tesco car park.

[Potemkine!]

€11 million for in the end a report made by ChatGPT. Isn't life beautiful?

[Pascal Monett]

I see that there is the usual amount of deference to, and confidence in, EU projects.

Carry on !

[Will Godfrey]

Oh here we go again.

Let's all make fun of the EU. I don't see anyone extolling the virtues of any other group by comparison. Come to that, it rather sounds like whistling in the dark.

Coat because I had the chance to move to Germainy some years back and turned it down :(

[EvilDrSmith]

Re: Oh here we go again.

Fair comment, but in the UK, the Institution of Civil Engineers has been leading calls / co-ordination for infrastructure resilience for some years.

It's not a case that it isn't being looked at, it's just being done in a less high profile / dramatic manner. Leaving it to the experts, as it were.

[Dan 55]

Re: Oh here we go again.

Indeed. I can see flooding/drainage infrastructure has been left to the experts.

Here's mud in your eye.

[Eponymous Bastard]

Ugh

The usual virtue signalling woke wank which the world media controlled by Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Musk twat, amongst countless other wealthy autocrats expect us to keep on believing.

I just hope the redemption is painful and slow when the ignorati realise they've been fooled and rebel; well one has to dream innit.