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Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) is the federal department responsible for housing over 190,000 Canadian federal public servants. During Y2K preparations, it became apparent that a single source or form of integrated, emergency response information at the infrastructure level did not exist. A process had to be created and developed that would serve as a single vehicle and source for building‐based emergency response. These preparations for Y2K saw the creation of the Infrastructure Continuity Unit (ICU) and a system for the creation, validation, and maintenance of Infrastructure Continuity Plans (ICPs). An ICP is an event‐management document that contains a series of procedures and protocols to be used during a building‐based incident or disruption of services. The ICU is supported nationally by a network of Regional Coordinators who oversee the gathering of information needed to create ICPs for their own parts of the country. This paper demonstrates how this system, along with the ICU’s recent certification by the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) to the ISO 9000 standard, have contributed to the ICU’s success. This paper takes the reader through an in‐depth exploration of the ICU’s processes, methodologies and procedures and demonstrates why, in a post‐September 11th world, the ICU has begun to attract international attention.

A review of relief‐and‐recovery glitches related to natural disasters revealed four main issues that hinder the effectiveness of relief efforts. A common theme across these issues is a need for a more holistic systems design to provide better coordination within humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR). This paper addresses this issue.

This is a conceptual paper using systems design theory to frame the extant literature and delineate the challenges and opportunities in HADR with respect to environment, processes, and goals. With the focus on systems design, the authors use fundamental principles of systems thinking to identify core issues and questions that require the attention of future research.

HADR supply chains are made up of a complex set of players. By answering the questions the paper have proposed using systems thinking, these organizations can be motivated to coordinate efforts in the HADR supply chain to create a more cohesive response effort.

Progress is needed to transition from temporary to synchronized, “borderless” HADR supply chain networks. The result would be that HADR supply chains would more effectively reduce suffering and operate at lower total costs – two goals that are worth pursuing.

This paper is written in response to Richey's call for a more theoretical base in HADR research. Addressing the proposed research questions introduced in this paper will increase HADR system transparency, allowing us to better evaluate theoretically the governance and synchronization mechanisms required to enhance collaboration and improve HADR effectiveness.

This study aimed to address the underexplored domain of organisational vulnerability, with a specific focus on understanding how vulnerability is understood in organisations and the underlying pathways leading to vulnerability.

This study utilised a narrative literature review methodology, using Google Scholar as the primary source, to analyse the concepts of organisational vulnerability in the context of disaster risk studies. The review focused on relevant documents published between the years 2000 and 2022.

The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of organisational vulnerability, which arises from both inherent weaknesses within the organisation and external risks that expose it to potential hazards. The inherent weaknesses are rooted in internal vulnerability pathways such as organisational culture, managerial ignorance, human resources, and communication weaknesses that compromise the organisation’s resilience. The external dimension of vulnerability is found in cascading vulnerability pathways, e.g. critical infrastructure, supply chains, and customer relationships.

As the frequency and severity of disasters continue to increase, organisations of all sizes face heightened vulnerability to unforeseen disruptions and potential destruction. Acknowledging and comprehending organisational vulnerability is a crucial initial step towards enhancing risk management effectiveness, fostering resilience, and promoting sustainable success in an interconnected global environment and an evolving disaster landscape.

A recent article in Strategy + Business magazine set out that the three primary goals of the CEO for creating ‘business resilience’ include (1) securing the people of the enterprise; (2) securing the core business of the enterprise (systems, facilities, infrastructure and processes); and (3) securing the business networks (such as the supply chain). Given these three goals, who is better suited to take on a leadership role in coordinating business continuity than the senior managers of corporate real estate (CRE) and workplace resource (WR) organisations? For several years, as the concept of Corporate Infrastructure Resource Management (CIRM) has evolved, senior CRE managers have sought out ways to create additional value for the enterprise’s core businesses. The authors believe that CRE organisations possess many of the competencies required to play significant roles in their business continuity programmes, and seizing this opportunity to fill the gaps can elevate the profile of workplace to the executive level. This paper presents a simple framework, based on five leverage points, that will enable CRE to take a more active leadership role in managing business continuity and to move to a ‘strategy and continuity’ model for managing corporate real estate.

Traditionally, facilities professionals are responsible for maintaining business operations after a disaster by safeguarding people and the physical infrastructure. While most organisations equate disaster preparedness to business continuity, the aftermath of 9/11 brought forth some startling realisations about business survival and business crisis. Boeing, a global company that was affected in a number of unexpected ways, embarked on an approach that separated, yet integrated the Disaster Preparedness Community with the Business Community. The result was a Business Continuity Model that fostered further development of robust Business Continuity Plans to serve employees, customers, stakeholders and community. Facilities professionals, equipped with an understanding of today’s business crisis and the Business Continuity Model, can serve as a partner to their Business Continuity Representative to educate, develop and execute a Business Continuity Plan that ensures business continuance through any unforeseen event.

This paper explores the strategies and roles for the organisation’s corporate real estate function during times of increased uncertainty. Although business continuity planning (BCP) might appear to be a separate and unique effort, there are synergies between continuity planning and standard business planning functions. It is suggested that enterprises should avoid the historically common mistake of stove‐piped planning within the context of BCP. Rather, enterprises must fully embrace an integrated approach to business continuity from crossfunctional to cross‐informational. If done correctly, business continuity planning can become a strategic asset that fully leverages an essential factor, the corporate real estate function.

The purpose of this article is to identify the role of cloud computing services in business continuity and disaster recovery plans and delineate responsibilities for their execution. In recent times, there has been a huge upsurge in the usage of cloud service models such as infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, software-as-a-service and disaster recovery-as-a-service. However, in case of an emergency event or during contract negotiations, a question might arise as to who should be accountable and responsible for the content and execution of recovery plans. The main stakeholders in this scenario are cloud service providers and cloud consumers.

After a review of academic articles, standards, guidelines and vendor documentation, a proposal for assigning accountability and responsibility for business continuity and disaster recovery plans is presented, based on the RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed) matrix. In this regard, a critical information infrastructure protection plan, a disaster recovery plan, an information systems contingency plan and a business continuity plan have been elaborated on in the article.

RACI matrices are presented for three general cloud service models and for three DRaaS models (managed, assisted and self-service). Accountability and responsibilities depend on the deployed cloud service model and the roles of cloud service providers and cloud consumers.

The proposed model for accountability and responsibility assignment provides a guideline for the allocation of responsibilities to roles not only during recovery but also during contract negotiations between cloud service providers and cloud consumers. By delving into business continuity and disaster recovery processes and activities, similar yet nuanced RACI matrices should be developed, as presented in this paper. They need to be customised for the specific context.

The purpose of this study is to address the problem of a plethora of potential plans related to business continuity and disaster recovery.

A review of the relevant academic articles, standards and guidelines related to business continuity and disaster recovery was conducted, and the discussed plans include critical information infrastructure plans, disaster recovery plans, information system contingency plans, business continuity plans and continuity of operations plans.

The content of each plan is explained. A layered business continuity and disaster recovery model is proposed, which consolidates all plans in a coherent manner.

Relationships, similarities and differences among each pair of plans are discussed, and the longitudinal validity and applicability of plans are presented.

The adverse interactions between disruptions can increase the supply chain's vulnerability. Accordingly, establishing supply chain resilience to deal with disruptions and employing business continuity planning to preserve risk management achievements is of considerable importance. The aforementioned idea is discussed in this study.

This study proposes a multi-objective optimization model for employing business continuity management and organizational resilience in a supply chain for responding to multiple interrelated disruptions. The improved augmented e-constraint and the scenario-based robust optimization methods are adopted for multi-objective programming and dealing with uncertainty, respectively. A case study of the automotive battery manufacturing industry is also considered to ensure real-world conformity of the model.

The results indicate that interactions between disruptions remarkably increase the supply chain's vulnerability. Choosing a higher fortification level for the supply chain and foreign suppliers reduces disruption impacts on resources and improves the supply chain's resilience and business continuity. Facilities dispersion, fortification of facilities, lateral transshipment, order deferral policy, dynamic capacity planning and direct transportation of products to markets are the most efficient resilience strategies in the under-study industry.

Applying resource allocation planning and portfolio selection to adopt preventive and reactive resilience strategies simultaneously to manage multiple interrelated disruptions in a real-world automotive battery manufacturing industry, maintaining the long-term achievements of supply chain resilience using business continuity management and dynamic capacity planning are the main contributions of the presented paper.

The events of September 11 focused the information technology community on business continuity and disaster recovery planning. In the days and weeks following the attack, many IT organizations assessed their infrastructures and allocated a larger portion of their 2002 budgets to continuity planning and disaster recovery. Most of those organizations will spend the new budget dollars on infrastructure upgrades and to projects that will bring increased redundancy.