T 0.5 Natural Disasters
With natural disasters natural changes are meant which have a devastating impact on people and infrastructures. Causes for a natural disaster can be seismic, climatic or volcanic phenomena such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions. Examples of extreme meteorological phenomena are thunderstorms, hurricanes or cyclones. Depending on its location, the institution is exposed to these risks stemming from various types of natural disasters to a greater or lesser degree.
Examples:
- In the case of computing centres in flood-endangered areas, there is a particular danger of water entering into the building in an uncontrolled manner (flooding or phreatic rise).
- The frequency of earthquakes and hence the risk accompanying them depends strongly on the geographical location.
- Extremely high solar activity has in the past repeatedly led to impairments of telecommunications infrastructures and the energy supply.
Independent of the type of natural disaster, even in areas not directly affected by it, the danger exists that supply facilities, communication links or IT components will be damaged or put out of operation. In particular, the failure of the central supply facilities of the building (main power distributor, telephone, data) can cause very high losses. Access to the infrastructure by the maintenance and service staff can be impeded due to extensive restricted areas.
Examples:
- Many commercial enterprises, also large companies, do not take the threat of floods into account adequately. There is a company which has been "surprised" by flood damage in their computing centre several times already. The computing centre literally swam away after flood damage for the second time within 14 months. The loss incurred amounted to several hundred thousand Euros and this has not been covered by insurance.
- An IT system has been installed at a site with a geographic location well-known for a volcanic activity (intermittent phenomenon, where volcanic emission phases alternate with somewhat long resting phases).