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City Preparedness Webinar Series: How European Cities are Navigating Critical Infrastructure Disruptions and Social Impacts

Publication Date:

25/06/2025

Content Type:

Event Reports

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City PreparednessCity Preparedness WebinarCrisis CommunicationCrisis ResponseEmerging threatsInfrastructure DisruptionsSocial CohesionUtrecht

— 12 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the event and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Webinar 1: Navigating Disruptions to Critical Infrastructure and Social Impacts

On 25 June 2025, the Strong Cities Network convened more than 65 city officials and practitioners from across Europe for the first in a three-part webinar series on City Preparedness: How European Cities are Navigating the Evolving Threat Environment & Social Impacts, co-hosted by the Strong Cities Network and the Municipality of Utrecht (the Netherlands).

As geopolitical tensions continue to rise across Europe and globally, national governments are increasingly urging residents to be prepared for potential disruptions to critical infrastructure and essential services. In parallel, local governments are looking to develop or revisit existing local strategies to address an increasingly complex threat environment, one that poses significant risks to residents and social cohesion.

In this context, the Municipality of Utrecht — a member of the Strong Cities Network since 2017 — requested Strong Cities’ support in facilitating European city-to-city learning and the exchange of strategies, key considerations and practical measures across three crucial areas:

1. How cities can prepare for and respond to disruptions to critical infrastructure and public services, such as power outages, water supply failures, and digital or physical service interruptions
2. How cities can prepare for and respond to broader regional and global instability, which may result in population displacement or increased migration, and the resultant pressures on host communities, local services and social cohesion.
3. Strategies and approaches for effective local leadership and strategic communications during such disruptions and times of crisis.

Together, the Municipality of Utrecht and Strong Cities are leading a three-part webinar series addressing these areas. The first webinar, held in June, focused on how cities can prepare for and respond to significant disruptions to critical infrastructure, including inter alia prolonged power outages, water supply failures and digital and physical service interruptions, and resultant impacts on social cohesion. The webinar brought together experienced officials from Utrecht (The Netherlands), Vantaa (Finland) and Fuenlabrada (Spain), alongside participants from over 30 other cities across Europe and the Western Balkans.

Key Takeaways

1. The threat to critical infrastructure has rapidly intensified, demanding a fundamental shift in preparedness from cities. After decades of relative stability, a changing geopolitical landscape has made large-scale disruptions plausible, with many cities and their populations feeling underprepared.
2. Effective crisis response is built on peacetime investments in social cohesion, not just on emergency protocols. The strength of a community’s trust and social fabric may help to determine whether a disruption leads to solidarity or a societal crisis. Such investments include establishing trusted relationships with local communities and forging networks of community partners.
3. Preparing for systemic disruptions requires coordination between local governments and other stakeholders. Cities must proactively dovetail with, complement and deconflict with national and state authority responsibilities, and invest in building strong, collaborative relationships with key public and private stakeholders, including inter alia utility companies, through joint planning and exercises.
4. Crisis communication plans must be multi-layered to be inclusive and reach all residents. Widespread power outages can render digital communication useless within hours, forcing a reliance on analogue tools like radio and pre-designated physical meeting points. Reaching diverse and multilingual populations during a crisis requires leveraging trusted community organisations to help disseminate critical information.

Key Themes

Disruptions to Critical Infrastructure: An Emerging Threat

Geopolitical tensions, cyber-attacks, information manipulation and extreme weather events are putting increasing pressure on everyday systems that cities and communities rely on, from electricity and clean water to public transport and communications. When disruptions occur, it is local governments that typically bear the brunt of the response.

In this context, bolstering preparedness is increasingly becoming a priority for local governments across Europe and the Western Balkans, a fundamental shift that was illustrated by Mayor Sharon Dijksma (Municipality of Utrecht). She shared how a working visit to Kyiv (Ukraine) in 2023 – where she saw how Ukrainians were striving to maintain normal life under wartime conditions – revealed gaps in Utrecht’s approaches to major disruptions and prompted the city to reassess the city’s own preparedness. Luuk Steenwelle, Manager Public Safety at the Municipality of Utrecht shared how, in response to this, his department has launched a working group that focuses on preparing for two primary scenarios: a week-long power outage across large parts of the Netherlands, and host nation support for NATO operations, which would involve military logistics flowing through the Netherlands along with potential refugees.

Lotte Fast Carlsen, Deputy Director of Nordic Safe Cities, reinforced Dijksma’s assessment, noting that hybrid threats, such as infrastructure sabotage and disinformation campaigns, pose a threat to social cohesion across Europe. She emphasised that when critical infrastructures are disrupted, the strength of community trust and cohesion determines whether the disruption leads to solidarity or societal crisis. That’s why it is crucial that “the response isn’t just about restoring electricity or water, but about preserving public trust, community cohesion and calm in the face of fear”. She underscored that there is much to be learned from Finland, as the Finnish security model has incorporated preparedness not just policy or politics, but as part of the national culture. This cultural approach to preparedness, developed through decades of experience with civil defence and living near a volatile geopolitical border, provides a foundation for effective crisis response that goes beyond government capabilities alone.

Investing in Preparedness in Peacetime

A fundamental theme emerging from the discussion was that investing in social infrastructure and community trust during peacetime is essential for successful crisis response. As Lotte Fast Carlsen emphasised, societal resilience is not built during a crisis but must be cultivated long before one hits. This requires local authorities to build trust with their communities and ensure robust social policies and resource networks are in place and regularly exercised well in advance of any incident.

The experience of Fuenlabrada (Spain) illustrated this principle. Alvaro Revilla, the city’s Director of Social Affairs, described Fuenlabrada as a working-class city of nearly 200,000 inhabitants in the Madrid metropolitan area. He explained that the city’s response to crises is rooted in a long-standing “model of coexistence” based on the active participation of its citizens. This model is centred on key structures like a ‘Co-existence Board’ and a Solidarity Network, which bring together neighbourhood associations, social entities and migrant associations. The Co-existence board brings together individual volunteers, trade unions, cultural groups and local NGOs to co-design initiatives that promote social cohesion and integration. Amongst others, it fosters constructive conversations amongst different cultural, ethnic and social groups about life in the city and how this can be improved, and engages community members in local government decision-making processes more broadly. The Solidarity Network comprises community-based volunteers and public officials and was established in collaboration with the Co-existence board. While the Network was originally launched to collect donations and coordinate food distribution and other essential services to those most impacted by COVID-19, it continues to operate and has since expanded its mandate to focus on poverty alleviation more broadly, as well as socioeconomic integration.

When a recent power outage in April hit the city (along with much of Spain, Portugal and southwestern France) and caused widespread failures of digital communications, these pre-existing community networks proved essential for organising a community-centred response and vital face-to-face communication and support. The City Council established municipal centres as hubs for support and for coordinating between civil protection, police and volunteers for an efficient emergency response. Fuenlabrada’s experience underscores that the strength and efficacy of a city’s response is determined as much by the foundational trust and community cohesion built over the years as it is by the protocols enacted during an emergency.

Finland’s Comprehensive Security Model: The Local Perspective

Vantaa, Finland’s fourth-largest city, operates within Finland’s comprehensive security model that has been developed over decades. Samu Iiskola, Vantaa’s Head of Risk Management, explained that Finland’s approach is built on multiple layers of legislation, including preparedness acts, municipal acts and rescue acts that assign specific responsibilities to cities. For example, cities must cooperate with local businesses to ensure food distribution during shortages and provide evacuation centres for residents. Vantaa has also invested in backup energy supplies for its city hall and developed rapid communication systems that can function when power is lost. They maintain emergency food supplies in schools and daycares for three days and are incorporating crisis-resilient kitchens into new building projects that can operate with generators and pressurised water during power outages.

Samu shared that triangulated leadership is a key principle of Vantaa’s crisis management, a concept introduced during the updating of their preparedness planning in 2024, which consists of three core elements: leadership, communications and crisis situational awareness. The primary purpose of integrating these components is to enable the city to lead effectively through any crisis or disruption and to provide for its residents. Vantaa cites this approach as essential to the efficacy and success of the city’s response. For example, Vantaa has equipped its city hall with a power supply to ensure that leadership and internal communication can continue even during prolonged power outages. They also utilise a national messaging app to disseminate urgent information to individuals in leadership positions and residents. Iiskola recommended that cities prioritise the following key areas when developing preparedness strategies:

• Risk assessments
• Crisis management plan
• Crisis communication plan
• Civil protection plan
• Evacuation plan
• Cooperation
• Education, exercises and training
• Strengthening residents’ self-preparedness

Crisis Communication: Challenges and Strategies

The webinar revealed that clear and consistent communication should be a key priority for cities that are dealing with an infrastructure crisis, including challenges around communicating with diverse urban populations and those in rural areas during crises. Vantaa, in which more than 120 languages are spoken, initially attempted to provide crisis communications in seven or eight languages during the pandemic. However, they discovered that this approach didn’t effectively reach all residents who needed the information. They have since streamlined their approach to focus on Finnish, Swedish and English, recognising that residents typically find friends or relatives to translate information when needed. To effectively serve diverse populations, multilingual support should be specifically tailored to community needs. The City of Aurora, Colorado, exemplifies this with its Language Access Plan, enabling city staff to interact with all residents. Similarly, Utrecht engages local communities to help translate information where necessary and utilises existing relationships with religious and community organisations to establish communication channels that can be activated quickly during crises. During the power outage, Fuenlabrada had to develop new protocols for analogue communication via radio and establish predetermined meeting points and times for community coordination. Through their Solidarity Network, the Municipality was able to look out for the most affected individuals in the city.

Integrating Vulnerable Groups Through Community Networks

Addressing the needs of diverse and vulnerable populations requires both robust social policies developed before crises occur and strong networks of social resources that can be activated during emergencies. Fuenlabrada’s experience demonstrates that effective crisis response depends on having powerful social policies and networks of social resources already in place. Their Coexistence Board and Solidarity Network, which include neighbourhood associations, social entities and migrant associations that work directly with the City Council, work in two ways: detecting people in need and providing sufficient resources to address those needs. Utrecht aims to invest specifically in communicating with people who may not be within reach via existing communication channels or more geographically remote. They recognise the need to reach the most vulnerable people in specific suburbs and are focusing extra energy on this.

Building Partnerships: Engaging Utility Companies

The relationship between cities and utility companies emerged as a critical but challenging aspect of preparedness planning. Vantaa has developed strong cooperation with local energy companies through regular communication, shared preparedness planning and joint training exercises. The city and utility companies exchange personnel during exercises and crises, ensuring that each organisation has expert knowledge available from the other.

Utrecht experienced significant initial difficulties with utility companies, spending nearly two years to establish productive conversations. The challenge arose because national government standards focused on smaller, shorter-duration disruptions, whereas utility companies initially resisted discussions about larger-scale scenarios. However, as the risk environment has changed, these companies began to acknowledge that their approaches must also evolve. The changing risk environment, combined with increasing electrical demand, has created new vulnerabilities that require collaborative planning.

Ensuring Effective Supply Chain Management

Supply chain vulnerabilities and interruptions, particularly regarding food and medical supplies, was another focus. Despite producing enough food domestically, Utrecht said that the Netherlands faces challenges with some ‘just-in-time’ delivery systems that could fail during extended power outages. Medication presents an even greater challenge, as most pharmaceuticals are now produced outside Europe. Finland maintains some national supply warehouses, but the pandemic revealed that these supplies would not last if all municipalities needed them simultaneously. Locally, Vantaa maintains three days of emergency food supplies in schools and daycares, along with diesel fuel reserves for local vehicles. However, they acknowledge that supplies lasting beyond one to two weeks would require external support. Looking ahead, they’re planning crisis preparedness kitchens that can be powered by generators.

National-Local Cooperation

The webinar highlighted the complexity of multi-level governance during crises. The relationship between city and national governments varies significantly across countries, but a common theme was that cities need clear protocols and regular coordination mechanisms, including with community, state and national-level government counterparts, established during peacetime. Spain’s three-tier administrative system (national, regional and local) creates coordination challenges with different competencies at each level. Finland’s approach of gathering municipalities in the capital region to coordinate with the central government during major incidents provides a potential model for an effective multi-level response. This involves clear legislative frameworks that define responsibilities, with municipalities typically playing supportive roles to national authorities, while municipalities maintain primary responsibility for resident care and local communications.

Next Steps

The webinar series will continue in September with a conversation on how cities can prepare for and respond to broader regional and global instability, which may result in population displacement or increased migration, and the resultant pressures on host communities, local services and social cohesion. In October, the third and final webinar will discuss strategies and approaches for effective local leadership and strategic communications during such disruptions and times of crisis. These discussions aim to create practical resources for cities across Europe and the Western Balkans.

Additional Resources

• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network (Updated February 2025)
• City Spotlight: Fuenlabrada (Spain), Strong Cities Network (2025)
• 72 Hours, The Finnish National Rescue Association
• Global Crises, Local Impacts Initiative, Strong Cities Network
• National-Local Cooperation, Strong Cities Network

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Contact

For more information on this webinar series, please contact Strong Cities at [email protected].

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