Integrated emergency management of ‘lifeline’ highway networks: lessons for interoperability

Abstract

In 2021 the UK government published a review of lessons learned by the UK highways sector from extreme weather emergencies. As described in this paper, the review focused on the sector’s engagement with integrated emergency management and managing highways as critical ‘lifeline’ infrastructure. Focusing on robustness, reliability, redundancy, rapidity, resourcefulness and recovery, the review identified the need to develop consistent rapid impact assessment reporting, linked to regional- and national-level mutual aid contingencies. Underpinning this was the need to strengthen highway engineers’ ability to ‘prepare for their worst day, rather than their average day’.