Society for Crisis Preparedness – Newsletter #10

By Herbert Saurugg 2 August 2023 Updated on 12 September 2023

New direction for the GfKV and a new GfKV vice-president

On 15 July 2023 the general assembly decided to change the previous name “Österreichische Gesellschaft für Krisenvorsorge” (Austrian Society for Crisis Preparedness), to extend our activities to the neighbouring countries Germany and Switzerland, and to express this step in the name “Gesellschaft für Krisenvorsorge” (Society for Crisis Preparedness). We have also added the flags of Germany and Switzerland to our logo.

In the meantime, new members have been gained in Germany, and in Switzerland too we are building up a community. Crisis preparedness knows no borders, and not everyone has to reinvent the wheel in this field. We will also succeed in broadening the range of topics, even if the blackout scenario and the severe supply crises it triggers will remain at the centre of our considerations. After all, many other scenarios can also be managed better with the necessary basic preparedness.

President Herbert Saurugg, MSc, was re-elected for the next 4 years. The previous vice-president, Colonel (ret.) Gottfried Pausch, has made his position available in favour of this new direction and will actively support our activities as treasurer in future. Dr Sandra Kreitner (Germany) was elected as the new vice-president.

She was already ambassador in Bavaria and, together with Christian Haas, has contributed significantly over the last 2 years to the topic of blackout preparedness being discussed and advanced more widely in Bavaria too. Christian Haas will now take over the ambassador role.

In addition, we have a very committed core team who want to work on and prepare further topics in the coming months. We will also report on concrete results in the newsletter.

Blackout simulation “Neustart” (Restart) – 2nd edition

The 1st edition of the blackout simulation “Neustart” was a great success and sold out after just a few months. The 2nd edition is now in production. It is due to be delivered in September 2023.

We have taken up the constructive feedback on the 1st edition and incorporated it into the updated version. This makes “Neustart” an even more valuable training tool. We are particularly pleased about the many positive responses. There is now also international interest, so there will also be an English-language update set.

Until 15 August 2023 we are offering all newsletter recipients the expired pre-order offer of 60 instead of 75 euros, or 220 instead of 250 euros for the Pro version. Simply pre-order at the regular price at https://www.spiele-entwickler-spieltrieb.de/spiele/neustart (German) and enter “GfKV-Newsletter” in the order notes in the shopping cart.

Current situation

Finally, a short summary of the current situation.

As we already noted in the last Newsletter #09 (German), the winter of 2022/23 turned out quite differently and more positively than we had expected and assessed in Newsletter #08 with regard to the electricity and energy supply. Unfortunately, this has also meant that blackout and electricity shortage preparedness has lost priority again in many areas.

At the same time, however, various “weak signals” (German) have increased significantly. We therefore cannot speak of real relief, which is also increasingly being raised by the transmission system operators (see e.g. APG of 27 July 2023 or TSOs of 27 March 2023 (German)). There will be more on this in the next newsletter.

On the “weak signals”, see also the blog posts (German) and the numerous short news items (German). The following articles deserve particular mention (all German):

We wish you a lovely and relaxing rest of the summer!

Kind regards,

Herbert Saurugg and Sandra Kreitner

Original newsletter (German)