How do you create realistic disaster scenarios?

Before creating disaster scenarios for stress testing, it’s essential to define the objectives and scope of your efforts. Identify what you aim to achieve and the key questions you want to answer through the testing process. Establish the criteria and metrics for measuring results, such as response times, error rates, and resource utilization. Additionally, clarify the boundaries and limitations of your system, process, or organization. Addressing these questions will help narrow the focus and scope of your stress testing, ensuring that the scenarios you develop are relevant, realistic, and aligned with your overall goals, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness of your stress testing efforts.

The first step is to map the entire process and establish a chain of events and process that is related. Then, identify every and single event that may impact, from the smallest, and maybe less harmfull, to the most challenging. Don't forget to exercise the Black Swan effect: it may seen less probable, but is possible.

Pour créer des scénarios de catastrophe réalistes, je me concentrerais sur trois éléments clés : • Premièrement, une étude approfondie des catastrophes passées me permettrait d'identifier les facteurs déterminants. • Ensuite, j'observerais attentivement les tendances actuelles pour imaginer des perturbations plausibles. • Enfin, j'adopterais un style d'écriture accessible afin de rendre mes scénarios compréhensibles par tous.

One method you can use to create realistic scenarios is by looking at the recent real-life events that have had negative business impact and determine if there are common threads. Disasters are caused by process failures so examination of key processes helps us to find the critical points of failure. Once we identify these features, we can better identify risks and design "what if" problem/solution scenarios.

Risk Management Tools and Methods 1. Risk Identification: a. Brainstorm potential risks. b. Categorize risks by relevance to your environment. c. Assess frequency and potential consequences of top hazards. 2. Heat Mapping: a. Create a heat map based on frequency and consequence. b. Identify top hazards. c. Plot risks as low, medium, or high in terms of probability and consequence. 3. Strength of Defense: a. Focus on high-consequence risks from the heat map. b. Evaluate defense types: Engineered, Administrative, Cultural. c. Determine defense purposes: Eliminate, Prevent/Catch, Detect/Mitigate. d. Design a defense plan for each risk.

The main risk factors are the people who are in charge of the systems. Living through a pandemic where the majority of people deny we're in one is a great lesson for future pandemics and other disasters. There will be people denying an earthquake as buildings crumble in front of them. Knowing that people will not be a source of comfort or help adds to the risk. Take note right now who is masking and pleading for clean air because those people will lead you through all disasters. If someone [even those in public health] is telling you that masks don't work or people are sick because of the stay at home orders from four years ago, they will hinder any step forward to averting further catastrophe.

I actually did this in my past leadership roles. To create realistic disaster scenarios, I worked closely with security and safety teams to understand the most likely threats specific to our area—whether natural disasters, security breaches, or health emergencies. From there, I built scenarios backwards, focusing on what would lead to those situations. Key takeaways were ensuring my team was trained and ready. After each scenario, we conducted an After Action Review to identify what worked and where improvements were needed, ensuring continuous learning and preparedness.

You don't need to create potential catastrophes when we're already ignoring major ones. The jet stream is supposed to collapse next year, multiple airborne viruses are ignored by governments and scientists have concluded a major catastrophe will occur in less than ten years. We're already living through end times why work harder at a hypothetical. Also AI is overloading the power grid for 'art' no one asked for.

I define the parameters and assumptions, After choosing the scenarios,. This includes setting up time frames, understanding the resources available, and determining recovery goals. For example, I might assume that the backup systems will take 30 minutes to come online or that certain staff members will be unavailable during the event. Setting these parameters ensures that the disaster scenario is as close to real-life as possible.

I conduct a stress test to evaluate how the system or team handles the disaster. I monitor how the systems react, where the weak points are, and how well the team follows the disaster recovery plan. After the test, I evaluate the results and look for areas that need improvement, whether it’s in the recovery process or the team’s response time. Stress testing gives valuable insights into how prepared the organization really is.

After selecting a real threat make sure to create a group of people who are denying the event is actually taking place with a few who are warning others. You'll see the deniers are more vocal and making it difficult for those who want to live by mask bans or demonization of those taking any precautions. I doubt people will learn anything since they haven't in the four years. I guess denial is a wonderful drug. What you'll learn is 75% of people would rather be wrong than stand out and 1% of people are sociopaths who are the loudest. Billionaires don't care about you. They will step over your dead body to save a nickel. Never depend on the people who have sacrificed your life for the economy. Clean the air, stop airborne pathogens

I’ve learned is to always involve key stakeholders in creating and evaluating disaster scenarios. Their input helps make the scenarios more realistic, and it also ensures everyone knows their role in case of an actual disaster. Additionally, it’s important to regularly update and revisit the scenarios as new technologies, systems, or risks emerge, keeping the disaster plans current and effective.

Start from reality. I helped a client create scenarios to help improve communication, process flow productivity and team work. We started with past “disasters” that had impact on the business process. When we rolled out the scenarios, employees remembered those situations but now how to improve them. The stress test was to have employees determine better ways to solve those situations and in different contexts and to emphasize that there is no absolute correct answer. This invited creativity, team work, and accountability for making things better. As a side benefit, it helped with team building and conflict resolution too.