It is a game of speculation. Which security-related, social or political incidents could shape the year 2019:
Drone incident / accident at an airport. With the increasing spread of privately and commercially used drones, it can be assumed that accidental or intended incidents with drones will occur. At least one serious accident of drones with aircraft or airports is to be expected.
Long-term cold weather with impairment of gas supply and restrictions in shipping, especially inland shipping and North-East Sea.
The last flood on the Elbe or Rhine with extensive flooding was already six years ago – in the next four years there will presumably be a further flooding situation across federal states.
Major demonstrations in the area of conflict between infrastructure and energy generation such as Hambacher Forst, Stuttgart 21 etc. lead to significantly longer and more complicated planning and implementation processes of large-scale and small-scale projects in these sectors up to blockade. At the same time, sabotage actions can also be expected at other locations by the companies involved. Also, the police, which are bound there and overburdened with various tasks, are not available for investigations in white-collar crime, which leads to the damage of serious companies.
Politically unstable governments in the eastern federal states due to the upswing of the right-wing parties and economic migration from the respective federal states.
Tailored cyber attack on several smaller hospitals or hospital groups with failure to provide patient care for several weeks.
The Brexit leads to massive upheavals in the German-British economy. The crisis management of the British government turns out to be disastrous, the impact is further increased by the lack of confidence of the European and British population as well as the economy in the ability of the governments to cope with the crisis. Whether it is a no-deal or a negotiated Brexit – the overall situation is too vague and dynamic for the economy to be able to oversee the multiple interdependencies. Adequate preparation has not taken place – the situation must be driven “on sight” through the fog.
Crumbling infrastructure, especially motorway bridges on the West-East connection in NRW, lead to incalculable transport times. It is to be expected that further bridges can only be kept alive if trucks are banned from driving. A worst-case scenario would be further bridge closures or even collapses at the bottlenecks over the Rhine.
Transatlantic trade is becoming more risky due to the erratic and unforeseen actions of the US government. Irrational skipping actions by the US President posted on Twitter – from anything ranging from customs duties to trade wars – do not allow any reaction time. In addition to the impact of uncertainties and trade restrictions, speculators use this to put targeted pressure on the share prices of affected companies.
A wave of disease with a high speed of spread and medium virulence puts about one third of their employees out of action for two to three weeks. The health care system works significantly above the stress limit, which leads to dramatic restrictions in standard care.
The above list has no claim to probability of occurrence or completeness.
But would you and your company be prepared for such situations?
