British Airways and many other businesses have offshored electricity-dependent functions like IT services and call centres to northern India (BA chief refuses to resign after ‘catastrophic’ IT failure, 30 May). Increasingly this is a region in the grip of extended droughts and annual heatwaves associated with record-breaking temperatures that scientists say will only get worse with climate change.
Catastrophic electricity system failures are exacerbated by heat-triggered thunderstorms and regional outages resulting from the air-conditioning-related energy demand spikes that are common in India. In July 2012 power failed for 600 million people in northern India in the biggest blackout in history.
It is rather surprising that business continuity planners allow their clients to relocate energy and water-hungry operations to such climate-challenged regions. British Airways’ Indian HQ is located in a tall glass tower with no opening windows in the New Delhi satellite city of Gurgaon. Once the limited backup power supplies are exhausted in such buildings they have to be evacuated.
One simple solution is to design buildings very differently with sensibly sized and shaded opening windows, powered by solar energy. Another is to onshore electricity-hungry operations back to cooler Britain. I expect the business continuity community are re-evaluating their “future-proofing” strategies as I write. Possibly too late in many cases. We made these points in our 2009 book on Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change, but people tend not to take action till the catastrophe happens to them. Perhaps they will now?
Emeritus Professor Sue Roaf
Oxford
• Our modern world is dangerously exposed by this reliance on the internet and new technology. First of all we had the NHS hacking problems, which were entirely foreseeable. Whitehall has made us all rely on IT far too much when it is not reliable. Even massive quantities of tax-gathering are done this way. Now BA is effectively grounded during one of the busiest weekends of the year because of overreliance on modern technology. There are just enough old-time civil servants left alive and in service to turn back the clock and take away our dangerous dependence on modern technology. I hope the control tower at London City Airport will continue to be manned as a result of the events of the last fortnight.
Nigel Boddy
Darlington, County Durham
• It is clear that the ultimate responsibility for ensuring risk is managed and that disaster recovery plans for IT systems are in place rests with the BA board. When will we see honourable resignations? Or will this be yet another scenario where no company directors are held to account?
Richard Gilyead
Saffron Walden, Essex
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