The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cyber and Infrastructure Analysis released in early April a report examining the interdependencies, dependencies and resilience of dams. Sector Resilience Report: Dams includes discussion of the impacts on some water sector facilities as a result of a loss of a dam. It also provides an overview of some of the threats and hazards to the dams sector and a list of resilience issues and best practices.
The report includes three key findings:
- Of the 100 assessed dam facilities, more than half are dependent upon electric power (82 percent), communications (59 percent) and information technology (IT) (59 percent) for core operations.
- Most have backup or alternate sources for these external utilities: 90 percent have backup for electric power, 95 percent for communications and 97 percent for IT, highlighting the ability of most of the assessed dams facilities to operate autonomously when a critical utility is lost.
- Without considering any backup or alternate sources of electric power for the assessed facilities, dam facility operability would be degraded 100 percent after 15 minutes from loss of electric power. For most of those with backup power sources, the backup systems will, on average, provide enough power to fully support core operations for up to five days without the need to refuel.