Promoting Port Resiliency

Link Daniel, Smith James F., Hellingrath Bernd, Babun Teo A.

Zusammenfassung

The two relatively new fields—resiliency and preparedness—increasingly show the need to improve the resiliency and preparedness of both seaports and airports. One major problem is the unwillingness of seaports and airports—ports in general—to invest in the redundancy, robustness, and flexibility/agility measures that lead to resiliency. Economic pressures from competition among ports and from the power of tenants and users to force ports to minimize capital and operating costs often make it unattractive for a port to invest in the extra planning, training, drilling, exercising, and equipment to enhance resiliency. In addition, port managers are often preoccupied with normal operations and hesitant to consider “worst case” scenarios with a high impact but low probability. Such a situation creates a lack of motivation on the part of ports to invest in resiliency and a lack of motivation of their tenants and users to support these kinds of investment. This paper proposes a novel way to motivate port owners and operators and encourage their tenants and users to support resiliency efforts. The basic concept is to create a port resiliency certification program with clear, explicit standards, procedures, and documentation that the insurance and reinsurance industry can recognize as an effective strategy for risk reduction and loss reduction, a strategy that is worthy of reward through lowered premiums or preferred treatment on reimbursements for losses. This paper proposes a step-by-step process to create an airport resiliency certification program. A seaport resiliency program would follow.