National Risk Profile (NRP) National Risk Profile (NRP) Published by: The Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) Datavej 16 3460 Birkerød Denmark Tel.: +45 45 90 60 00 Fax: +45 45 90 60 60 E-mail: [email protected] www.brs.dk ISBN: 978-87-91590-69-6 Date of publication: 9 April 2013 2 National Risk Profile (NRP) Contents Foreword ................................................................................................................................................ 4 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Background ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Objectives ........................................................................................................................................... 5 Method ............................................................................................................................................... 5 2. The selected incident types .................................................................................................................. 6 Contents ............................................................................................................................................. 6 Selection process ................................................................................................................................. 6 Selection criteria .................................................................................................................................. 7 Approach ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Structure of the report ......................................................................................................................... 8 2.1. Hurricanes, strong storms and storm surges ...................................................................................... 9 2.2. Heavy rain and cloudbursts ............................................................................................................. 13 2.3. Pandemic influenza ......................................................................................................................... 18 2.4. Animal diseases and zoonoses ......................................................................................................... 22 2.5. Transport accidents ........................................................................................................................ 27 2.6. Accidents with dangerous substances on land .................................................................................. 31 2.7. Marine pollution accidents ............................................................................................................... 36 2.8. Nuclear accidents ........................................................................................................................... 40 2.9. Terrorist acts.................................................................................................................................. 44 2.10. Cyber-attacks ............................................................................................................................... 49 3. Comparison of the incident types ....................................................................................................... 53 3 National Risk Profile (NRP) Foreword Welcome to the first edition of the National Risk Profile. The report describes the most serious natural and man-made risks from a Danish viewpoint. When the emergency services deploy, it is often in response to minor accidents, and we are accustomed to living in a society with a functioning infrastructure and where the security of supply is high. However, we should not be blind to the fact that major accidents and disasters do occur in Denmark. That is why we have a crisis management system with crosscutting staffs at the central, regional and local levels. It is also why DEMA, as a central part of Denmark‟s disaster preparedness, retains specialized equipment and personnel that can be deployed when the capacity of normal emergency services are no longer sufficient. In the National Risk Profile, we focus on 10 incident types whose common feature is that they can cause major accidents and disasters in Denmark. Whenever these occur, they can result in grave consequences for life, health and well-being; we can experience severe damage to property and the environment; and we may suddenly find that critical infrastructure breaks down or comes under extreme pressure. Last but not least, major accidents and disasters cost society a great deal of money: one need only recall that the cloudburst of 2 July 2011 resulted in damage worth over DKK 6 billion. The National Risk Profile shows that the risks that are characteristic of our present-day society are complex, often indifferent to borders, and constantly changing. We must therefore have a robust preparedness against major accidents and disasters. We must work determinedly with prevention, so that both the likeli- hood and the consequences of incidents may be reduced as far as possible. But prevention is not the answer to everything. There will always be extreme incidents which cannot be prevented. We must therefore also be prepared to generate an effective concerted operational response and crisis management across organisa- tions and administrative levels and across the public and private sector. At DEMA, we are well aware that unpredictability is a constant factor in all major accidents and disasters. We do not know what will happen, where or when. Neither do we know precisely how a given situation will de- velop. Nonetheless, I am convinced that, when we apply ourselves in earnest to preparedness planning and crisis management with regard to known incident types, we shall also have an advantage in dealing with the unknown, unforeseen or unpredictable accidents and disasters. The National Risk Profile gives an idea of the challenges we face from the 10 incident types that it singles out. The risk profile thus makes a good common starting point for our preparation and development of the emergency preparedness, and is to be seen as a new contribution to the planning assumptions of society‟s collective preparedness. Henning Thiesen Director 4 National Risk Profile (NRP) 1. Introduction Background DEMA continuously seeks to keep abreast of, to highlight and to disseminate knowledge of risks that may lead to major accidents and disasters. In practical terms, we gather information which can tell us about the characteristics and causal relations of each risk, how the overall risk picture currently looks, and how it may develop in future. Some risks are relatively easy to identify and monitor because they regularly trigger inci- dents or generally attract attention. In other cases, it requires greater perceptiveness to spot new risks or new ways in which familiar risks may develop. The National Risk Profile (NRP) is a result of this continuous effort to map and analyse risks. The NRP does not cover the whole range of risks confronting Danish society, but concentrates on those which DEMA be- lieves have the greatest claim on the attention of preparedness planners and operators at the moment. The NRP has been drawn up partly on DEMA‟s own initiative, partly following a request by the EU that its Member States should develop national risk assessments. This request is set out in the European Council‟s conclusions of April 2011 on Further Developing Risk Assessment for Disaster Management within the Euro- pean Union. The NRP thus meets a twofold need, European as well as national. Objectives The NRP aims to provide an overview of the most serious natural and man-made risks from a Danish view- point. At the same time, it is intended as a contribution to the preparedness planning assumptions among organisations – both within different sectors, across sectors, and at the central level of the national crisis management system. Among other things, the NRP can be useful in connection with activities such as risk and vulnerability analyses, capacity analyses and capacity planning, the drawing up or revision of prepared- ness plans, and preparedness-related training and exercises. Furthermore, the NRP corroborates DEMA‟s guide Comprehensive Preparedness Planning and other materials to be found on brs.dk. Method In this first edition of the NRP, DEMA has endeavoured to provide an overview by means of an informative and easily readable report, free from detailed and cumbersome methodological reflections. The method is principally qualitative, since reliable quantitative data seldom exist for the incident types that it deals with. Focus in the NRP is on assessing the possible consequences of the selected incident types rather than the likelihood of their occurrence. Our account is therefore limited to what may happen, and must not be inter- preted as an attempt to foretell where, when, how often, why or exactly how it will happen. Extraordinary incidents are by definition hard to predict, and the way they play out will almost always surprise. For the same reason, the NRP adopts a descriptive approach, with emphasis on historical documentation of real incidents that have affected Denmark in the past, instead of constructing scenarios around