Resilience Standards for Physical Sites Published

The Environment Department has published the resilience standards for the physical sites of the Velocity Interoperability Network. The standards set out what every site must have in place to continue operating through loss of mains power, loss of cooling, flooding and fire.

Under the power standard a site must have two independent supplies, or one supply and a standby generator with fuel for 48 hours at full load, together with uninterruptible power sufficient to carry the load until the standby supply is running. The cooling standard requires capacity to hold equipment rooms within the operating range of the equipment installed with one unit in reserve. The flood and fire standards address the siting and protection of equipment rooms, detection and suppression, and tested plans for shutdown, evacuation and recovery.

Every site is assessed against the four standards on registration and at intervals of no more than three years thereafter. Where a standard is not met the Department sets a date by which the site must comply. The standards and the assessment procedure are published on environment.gov.vin, and the status of each registered site is shown on the register of sites.