Technology to Combat Black Sky Supply Chain Disruption
In the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how fragile the supply chain we rely on to deliver the global demand for goods and services is. Hospitals and long-term healthcare facilities are not islands unto themselves but depend upon an array of interconnected support services and lifeline infrastructures that facilitate operations. Even during the best times, the interdependencies that have developed with technology and the reliance on electricity make operations vulnerable to disruptions.
Long-term, multi-sector disruption to the power grid by a global scale cyber attack or EMP attacks in a Black Sky hazard will cause disruptions or outright failure of the supply chains of vital medical supplies and will impact critical infrastructures like communications, water, sewage, and transportation systems for an extended period of time. Healthcare emergency managers and administrators will need to have current and reliable situational awareness to decide on appropriate courses of action to facilitate recovery and restore normal operations.
At EIS Council, we are working on developing a simulation “digital-twin” to enhance situational awareness and support decision-making for cross-sector infrastructures that would be impacted by a Black Sky hazard. For the past several years, we have been in the development of GINOM, the Global Infrastructure Network Optimization Model, for mapping a large-scale, multi-sector, critical infrastructure simulation operating system for electric, natural gas, emergency fuel, health care, water, wastewater treatment, population centers, and traffic.
GINOM considers the relationships and dynamic behavior of these various entities and simulates and predicts their behavior under possible disaster scenarios. The primary feature is the ability to integrate third-party simulations into a single environment without the need to share proprietary or sensitive data. Hospital and Healthcare planners may find this simulation system beneficial in providing situational awareness for decision-making.
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