enav.it

Economics vs Resilience Engineering ATM Business Continuity

Giancarlo FERRARA ENAV S.p.A. - VLSD & Exploratory Research

Capri 25‐26th September 2014

ATM Service/Business Continuity

• ATM Service/Business interruptions can occur anywhere, anytime and for several reason.

• Massive hurricanes, tsunamis, power outages, cyber-attacks, terrorist bombings, and more have made recent headlines.

• It is almost impossible to predict what may strike when.

• In today's world, it has become mandatory to prepare for such disaster scenarios and to plan for 'Business Continuity'.

• The development and the implementation of a proper Business Continuity Management is an integral and fundamental part of running a safe and effective Service/Business.

ATM Unusual/Emergency Situations 1/2

• The World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 completely changed the perception and the level of attention on the ATM Business Continuity issues.

• In the Spring 2010 Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud was triggering a massive domino effect that was ending up in the closure of almost all the European airspace with huge impact on the ATM Business/Service continuity: 100,000 lost flights in April 2010 Equivalent to 1% of European

flights in 2010 Only some 7,000 flights lost in

May 2010

ATM Unusual/Emergency Situations 2/2

• On December 2013 more than 200 flights were cancelled after a breakdown in the computer systems at the London Air Traffic Control Centre.:

Other airports were also affected, but it was Heathrow, one of the world's busiest international hub, that bore the brunt.

Hundreds more flights were delayed, and thousands of passengers ended up sitting on the tarmac or queuing in the terminal.

Factors affecting ATM Business Continuity

• There are several factors that might negatively affect ATM Service/Business continuity including:

Unplanned events such as natural and technological disasters, infrastructure and human threats;

Security threats, such as ciber-attacks, computer viruses, worms etc.;

Ever increasing volume of data and very high cost of downtime due to data loss or unavailability;

Increasing complexity and infrastructure and application interdependencies;

Regulatory and compliance requirements becoming increasingly complex;

Failure of a key third party arrangements.

Impacts on ATM Business Continuity

• In case of a disaster, some of the most critical interruptions/impacts on ATM Business should include:

Impact on revenues;

Loss of corporate image;

Delays in responding to AUs requests;

Inability to properly manage the recovery of the Service/Business in a timely manner;

Inability to meet regulatory requirements;

Unavailability of some technical and/or operational infrastructures;

Etc.

Business Continuity Management

• The Business Continuity Management process must embrace risk, emergency and recovery planning and an ATM organization should be able to manage a crisis or disaster event and have the capability of returning as soon as possible to normal operations.

• In this framework, Business Continuity management shall be considered as an essential element of the ATM Organisations’ risk management process.

• The ATM Business Continuity is more than just a regulatory requirement. It’s an ATM business necessity.

• Regulations demand operational resilience and high availability, but it’s the impact of downtime on business that motivate Air Navigation Service Providers to invest on this area.

• For ATM Business continuity today, resilience is the key.

Conclusions

• Developing an ATM Business Continuity planning environment or culture is a significant undertaking and should not be considered uniquely as an information technology related issue but more as an organisation-wide issue.

• The need for a robust and effective ATM Business Continuity Planning has never been so evident as today.

• Institutions and relevant organisations across the world have recognized the critical need for ATM to keep operating even while facing disasters.

• With a view to encouraging the ATM to implement adequate measures to ensure business continuity, several regulations have been introduced both nationally and internationally (e.g. ICAO Annex 11, EU-SES Regulation on Common Requirements, ESSIP GEN 01 etc.).

The only thing harder than emergency planning is explaining why you didn’t.

It wasn’t raining when Noah started to build the Ark!