"Hotspots" where hazards and life-sustaining infrastructure meet are being identified in a new civil defence study into how Otago's main utilities will cope in a major emergency.
Under government civil defence legislation, utilities such as electricity, roading, water supply, ports and airports that are critical to people's wellbeing should continue to operate at a reduced capacity during an emergency.
The Otago Civil Defence Group has made it a priority to look at these "lifelines" one at a time to identify if there are any areas which should be more resilient in an emergency.
Otago Regional Council engineering and natural hazards director Dr Gavin Palmer said they had started with high-voltage transmission lines, which in Otago were overseen by five different companies.
The lines had been placed on the council's hazard maps to identify any "hotspots".
The next stage was to investigate how critical the "hotspot" utilities were. If they were identified as critical, information on those "high risk" sites would be handed back to the utility companies so they could reduce the risk, Dr Palmer said.
The interdependency of critical utilities was also being examined. An example was water pumps which relied on electricity to run, or a rural bridge. The bridge, while not critical to roading authorities, would be important if it had a fibre optic cable, critical for communication, attached.
The group would also provide a forum for all the different companies and organisations running lifelines to share information about the risks and interdependencies, Dr Palmer said.
A similar exercise was being done with state highways and each lifeline would be worked through one after another.
"It's a matter of doing it in a systematic way."
There was not yet a timeframe for the project.
