Ahead of our webinar, Managing the Risk of Catastrophic Electricity Loss in New Zealand, Matt Boyd talks with Dr Simon Blouin about his research on catastrophic electricity loss, supply chain, and food security.

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:42 Interview begins
• 1:20 Definition of catastrophic electricity loss
• 4:05 Causes of catastrophic electricity loss
• 9:57 Description of the analytic model
• 12:56 Validation of the model
• 15:08 Findings of the modelling
• 19:07 Factors that determine severity of food shortage
• 20:46 Solutions & risk mitigation

Dr Blouin’s research with the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) probes the question of what happens if a coordinated cyberattack or high altitude nuclear detonation with electromagnetic pulse disrupts the US electrical grid. How does food flow from farm to fork, and how long might recovery take?

‍Key takeaways from the discussion include:

• Multiple hazards could plausibly take down a national electricity grid for an extended time
• New Zealand is not immune
• Food consumption critically depends on a complex and electricity-dependent production, processing and supply chain
• Famine is possible, even in developed and food rich countries
• Home food stockpiles play a key role in mitigating shorter (weeks) disruptions
• Stockpiles of grid components can mitigate longer-term outages (reducing outage time, the critical factor)
• Scenario planning and exercises are critical
• Nations should develop National Food Security Strategies for low probability but catastrophic impact events
• Ensuring equitable distribution of limited food supplies would be important

You can read Dr Blouin’s paper here (International Journal of Disaster Risk Science) to learn more about the technical details of his team’s open source analytic model.