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Adam Bannister is a contributor to IFSEC Global, having been in the role of Editor from 2014 through to November 2019. Adam also had stints as a journalist at cybersecurity publication, The Daily Swig, and as Managing Editor at Dynamis Online Media Group.
April 21, 2015

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London First: Resilience and Counter Terror in Safe Cities

IFSEC Global spoke to Robert Hall, Director of the Security & Resilience Network at London First, about the challenges facing municipal authorities in the 21st century.

Hall, who has a military background and brought many years’ experience in risk analysis to London First, also reveals the thinking behind the Global Resilience Summit, which is taking place in central London on 15 October.

IFSEC Global: Please tell us a bit about London First – what is its purpose?

Robert Hall: London First is a not-for-profit, membership organisation that’s been around about 20 years.  We’re here to make London the best city in the world to do business.

We’re interested in a whole range of sectors, whether that be education, rail, security, leisure, infrastructure… We promote through lobbying issues that businesses find of relevance around London.

IG: And what about your role within the organisation?

RH: I look after the Security and Resilience Network for London First’s members.

View of London CityWe run a series of briefings which look at threats and responses.  We also arrange conferences and projects in which parties can meet and discuss a whole raft of issues that may affect the safety and security of their people and assets.

IG: Please tell us about your event, the Global Resilience Summit, which will take place on 15 October…

RH: The Summit will bring together professionals who work in resilience, making cities and towns better prepared for the shocks and changes caused by natural or man-made disasters.

It’s appealing to security experts, but in that you can also have risk, business continuity, health and safety and IT people, who all consider the nature of a threat to a business and how it can be avoided or responded to, so technologists, physical security experts, communication experts, city managers, city planners, city authorities, the police and law enforcement.

A lot of people don’t understand properly what resilience means in the context of safe cities. It does have a precise connotation, and it requires some precise measures.  And that’s what our conference is trying to look at by bringing experts around the world to discuss it.

[Click here to find out more about attending the Global Resilience Summit on 15 October]

IG: There’s a growing focus on cities in the security industry at the moment…

RH: A range of trends and pressures is building.  Cities are attracting people, wherever you are in the world.

More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas – not just city centres but in massive conurbations around the centre.

Eighty-two percent of people in North America live in cities, 40% in Africa. I think the UN predicts that by 2050 around 66% of the world population will live in cities.

So they’re a magnet for people.

And cities are becoming more complex in their structure, their infrastructure, which makes them very vulnerable to disruption.

So whether you have a traffic accident or a traffic light going out, within seconds there’s a massive backlog of traffic. The same applies with train schedules.

So there’s an intense pressure on cities to cope with the number of people and a fragile infrastructure.

And that fragility makes it susceptible to deliberate disruption – whether that’s a terrorist, organised criminal or protester. It doesn’t’ take much for it to have a significant effect.

Critical national infrastructures are very vulnerable connections, and that is also tied with technology. Technology usually makes our life easier, but the fact that so much technology is increasingly connected makes the whole system that much more vulnerable.

IG: What’s the biggest challenge or worry in urban security in your opinion?

RH: Well I think if you ask the question what keeps people in business awake in night, clearly you’ve got to go down the risk agenda, and risks to businesses vary.  If you’re in Boots you have a different risk perspective to running a corner shop.

So there’s no list of generic concerns that apply to everybody.  But I think there’s a couple I would identify.

First, I think the fact that terrorism is high on the risk agenda at the moment.  And the threat does go in waves.

We had IRA bombings in the 70s or 80s but now we seem to be back in a very intense and ugly terrorism situation which is affecting just about every country in the world.

Whether it’s a corner shop or a major manufacturer, nobody is invulnerable to this thing.  The Canary Wharf bomb many years ago, during the IRA campaign, was planted in a sweet shop and affected a large area of Canary Wharf.

On the other hand, you’ve had the attack on one soldier in Woolwich. While people seem fairly subdued at the moment, particularly in London as they haven’t been directly affected, I’m sure that will change when something does happen – and the Severe alert we’re on does mean it is likely that something will happen.

IG: What about the virtual terror threat?

Cyber fraud is particularly an issue for business which is losing a massive amount of money from it.  And it’s very hard to control, because it can be run from Russia or Venezuela or any part of the world.

But it is also very applicable to the terrorist.  We seem to think of the bomb and the knife as the terrorist tools of option, but I think as terrorists become more sophisticated they will soon begin to realise the connections that control the city, the critical national infrastructure, is very susceptible to interruptions.  So I think we should be aware that that sort of disruption will take place.

And the third thing I will mention in terms of concern is climate.  Although it’s perhaps not the immediate concern of the business at the moment, I think people are beginning to realise that cities are increasingly vulnerable to climatic incidents such as flooding.  London is one of them, sitting on a major river.

But cities can also have extreme drought.  There is water stress in London so it’s vulnerable to two ends of the spectrum.

But we also have increasing temperatures. Cities are now about a couple of degrees higher than the rest of the country, and that’s causing a lot of people to suffer heat stress.

Some say the hottest summer of 2003 is going to be the norm in another 10 years.  So we need to design buildings that can cope with this intense heat and people need to be aware of the health effects.

IG: What is your background Robert before you worked for London First?

RH: Well I spent half of my life in the military, and the other half looking at risk and security for a range of corporate businesses.

IG: Have you ever had much to do with integrating disparate security technologies?

RH: Yes, I used to work for a large bank in the city, and we were the first in London to introduce a control system which simulated disaster and evacuation procedures.

So if there was a bomb, the system would allow you to determine how would you best get people out if a lift had failed or if someone had closed off an alleyway?  And that progressed to the integration of cameras, doors and guards into a more sophisticated product.

It was slightly ahead of its time and didn’t work as well as we would have liked. But I think you’ll see much more integration of systems on the back of the internet of things, big data and all that.

There is much more data around to be controlled in order to prevent its misuse.

IG: Have you had much involvement in terms of technology, on a consultancy basis, recommending technology?

RH: My personal experience in previous jobs has been arranging contracting equipment such as a the simulator I described to be installed in buildings.

We work very closely with building design companies, and we are working with the police to create a safe places accreditation scheme, which will be applicable to retailers and small businesses as much as large businesses.  This is a project to set a checklist for businesses to find out what level they’re at in their security preparation, whether that’s physical security or digital security.

IG: Where does Britain stand in terms of counter terror and security generally compared to other countries?

RH: Our mayor, Boris Johnson, has said London is the safest city in the world, which is a great thing to say.  There was a recent report produced by The Economist which ranked 50 cities around the world using 4 criteria: personal safety, digital safety, infrastructure safety, and health.

And London came out 18th of 50.  I think the top city was Tokyo.

So you have to take your pick between what our Mayor says and what The Economist is saying.

I think no city is ever absolutely safe. London is through virtue of its extremely good police services and intelligence services, I think, above the majority of countries.

And as long as we go on funding and supporting that I think we will stay near the top of the league.  But it doesn’t mean to say that an event won’t happen. The police have to prevent incidents 100% of the time, whereas the bad guys only need one success to get through.

So I think it’s a very tough game, particularly in this current international climate, to give absolute safety. And I think people need to be made aware of the problems. We have be realistic that we can’t guarantee zero incidents, but the chance of an individual being caught up in that incident is about as high as you winning the lottery.

So perception is very clearly a factor.  What people feel is not the same of what reality determines.  I think it’s a delicate balance.

IG: I’ll probably be more nervous getting on a flight next month than I do getting in a car, and yet statistically I’m more likely to die in a car.  So it’s very hard for us to be rational.

RH: Absolutely. It is a perception – you’re feeling of where you are safest.  All we can do is try and make the world as safe as we can, but incidents will happen, and we need to respond to them, learn from them, and make cities resilient so an incident doesn’t snarl up a city for the next 24-48 hours.  Cities need to respond quickly and get things back up and running.

After the success of the World Cities conference in October 2014 London First’s Security & Resilience Network has confirmed that a Global Resilience Summit will take place in central London on 15 October 2015. The event will provide a unique and crucial opportunity for security professionals from the private, voluntary, and wider public-sectors to collaborate and learn from one another on issues such as urban terrorism, crisis management, business resilience and city policing. Click here to find out more and to register to attend. 

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