Sharing Best Practices to Protect Electricity Networks from Natural Disasters

Organized by the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities the expert workshop on “Sharing Best Practices to Protect Electricity Networks from Natural Disasters” will bring together experts and representatives of the OSCE participating States and Partners for Co-operation, officials from government ministries and agencies, representatives of regional and international partner organizations as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations, business and academia.

Participants will share experiences and best practices in this field throughout the day; opportunities for further international co-operation will be identified.

Discussions will focus on the entire process of protecting electricity networks from natural disasters, including risk assessment, mitigation, management and recovery.

The following topics will be explored in particular:

• Vulnerability of electricity networks and impacts of natural hazards;
• Existing risk assessment tools and practices developed and applied by scientists and transmission systems operators;
• Resilience and safety of electricity networks, followed by recovery and lessons learned;
• Forms of governance needed to address new challenges on grid architecture and address responsibility of actors for adaptation;
• Experiences and needs for protecting electricity networks and managing blackouts from regional perspectives.

This event is a follow-up to MC.DEC/6/13 on “Protecting energy networks from natural and man-made disasters”, adopted in Kiev in 2013.