October 5, 2020

Power outage in Rotterdam

In the second largest city of the Netherlands, Rotterdam, a power outage could have serious implications on its 600 thousand inhabitants. Additionally, a power outage could result in serious economical implications considering the port of Rotterdam is the biggest sea port of Europe. A large scale power outage in San Diego in 2011 was taken as a case study to investigate the possible effects in Rotterdam. The case study showed that the ‘lifelines’ affected the most were transportation and communication. Similarly, a power outage in Rotterdam would likely cause severe traffic jams due to faulty traffic lights and the communication networks would not be able to handle the load which results in inability to reach emergency services. Healthwise, power outages might cause harm in many ways such as wastewater spills and faulty back up generators in hospitals. Proposed solutions include preventing the most likely cause of a power outage in Rotterdam: damage to the power grid and investments into alternative energy sources that are distributed via a different path than the power grid.