Risk Evaluation in Business Continuity

When considering the depth to which you need to plan the recovery process think outside the normal considerations of functional recovery. Develop plans and designs using the concept that every risk potential identified generates another step to be planned.

I have addressed this statement earlier in other papers and a portion of that considers a typical walk in the park, in a hostile environment.

Taking a walk on Earth is as easy as opening a door and going outside. A walk outdoors on a hostile planet means you need to suit up, check your air, make sure you have enough to get back, determine your alternatives should your air supply fail, decide how you will return to safety should you become injured, or tear your suit, etc. 

This is called risk evaluation and during the planning and design stage of everything going off world, those evaluations make the difference between failure and success, between life and death. Identifying the risks and designing those risks out of the off world environment is what BCP in space is all about. If the risk cannot be designed out, the alternatives and recovery options should be designed in.

Some failures can be automatically handled with little apparent effect on the survival systems. An example would be if normal power fails, the system automatically switches over to the auxiliary power supply with a negligible interruption in service. Other failures can be mitigated by having hardware backups or spare parts. 

For reduced downtime and system impact, it is always better to design for automatic recovery than restoration or reconfiguration. This process of failover or automatic recovery applies well to mechanical or electrical and computer systems but does not transfer so easily into the human element. 

Failover strategies typically cost more, not only in monetary terms but also in complexity and management and having a strategy for protecting and recovering each of the mission components is critical.

Now that you have a few of the basics, lets start thinking about a walk in the park, transportation, and habitats, They have all been addressed here before, so let’s analyze the risks.

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