In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, there have been requests from both ISO members and regional standards organizations to consider making a number of ISO Standards and their national adoptions freely accessible in order to support global efforts to deal with the effects on businesses and organizations.

ISO/TR 22370:2020, Security and resilience — Urban resilience — Framework and principles has recently been published. Urban areas are projected to provide the living and work environment for two-thirds of the global population of close to 10 billion by 2050. Urban disasters have an increasingly costly local, regional, national and global socio-economic impact. For example, dramatic disaster events alone of the past decade have claimed over a million lives, affected more than 2.5 billion people and caused over $1 trillion in economic losses. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is more challenging in built-up urban areas owing to their density. In particular, informal settlements are ill prepared to implement the largely adopted global measures to curb the spread – handwashing, confinement and social distancing.

ISO has circulated a Draft International Standard (DIS) for ballot for the next edition of “ISO 22300 Security and resilience - Vocabulary". The ballot is open for comment until June 06 and available for public review.

ISO 22392, Security and resilience – Community resilience – Guidelines for conducting peer reviews has recently been published.

Natural disasters, fires, supply chain issues or cyber-attacks are just some of the many threats to the running of any business. Organizations that have the capability to respond quickly and effectively when they happen, are the ones that survive.