Risk management and contingency planning

Knowing what and where your assets are is vital to identifying critical infrastructure and vulnerability to risk. Managing detailed information on the location, character and risk profile of utility assets is not just good commercial sense – it is a regulatory requirement and an essential first step for contingency planning, emergency response and minimising the potential impact on services.

Ordnance Survey produces a range of integrated digital products that provide much of the necessary GI to exploit location as the basis of a risk‑management process, combining height, address, topography, points of interest, imagery and road routing data. This information, used in an intelligent and integrated way and in association with your own data, provides the framework to:

• Link an address to an operational asset.
• Establish a range of scenarios to help local responders better prepare and assess potential impacts of an incident.
• Identify the exact location and status of your assets – enabling business continuity plans such as the rerouting of alternative supplies to be managed quickly and effectively.
• Share data – enables common referencing, allowing multiple agencies to make informed decisions.
• Make evidence‑based investment strategies; many utility companies are re-evaluating possible investments to increase the degree of redundancy of supply. GI, as a visual tool, provides the foundation for evidence‑based decisions and enables working together with regulators and key stakeholders to develop a means to ensure that they can proceed with the most effective schemes. 
• Manage the impact on service provision down to single household level. Efforts can be much more targeted in managing resources, risks and responses, particularly by establishing vulnerable customers.

Ordnance Survey data can provide context in terms of the topographic layout of the environment, transport infrastructure and identify both commercial and residential properties within the immediate proximity of sites. It also enables you to associate your own information to an asset such as their function, history, setting, usage, interaction with other structures and customer information. Having access to this kind of information can help inform investment strategies and priority decision making.

Case study

Contingency planning utilising geographic information

The flooding in the summer of 2007 has sharpened the utilities industry’s focus on the need to review flood defences, the degree to which they can maintain service when a key asset is out of action, and the adequacy of contingency planning should supplies fail.

   How United Utilities uses OS MasterMap