The Challenge
A global pandemic can affect operations in remote locations such as space, the Antarctic, and at sea, introducing risks to staff working in mission control or a remote operations center, disrupting supply chains, and contributing to behavioral and psychological impacts on those in space or other remote locations.
Different countries, government agencies, companies, and institutions involved in managing space missions, research expeditions, and other operations in remote environments have different approaches for managing operations during a global pandemic such as COVID-19. How institutions prioritize tasks, how they identify essential operations and personnel, and how they identify adaptation strategies to disrupting events — these all vary based on the different interests and capabilities of different institutions.
Your challenge is to identify potential impacts associated with a pandemic on operations in distant locations and to suggest solutions to prepare for or manage these collateral effects. Think about various risks both for people located in remote environments and for support operations at a mission control or operations facility. These risks could include psychological and technical risks, interruptions to support processes, and pre-existing risks that are exacerbated. What solutions would you suggest to address these challenges?
Considerations:
- How would an organization determine which tasks are mission critical, and who would address these? If key management were not able to perform critical human mission support, how would the resulting gaps be addressed?
- What would be the impacts of a pandemic on mission personnel and crew, and what would be the approach to assist them?
- How could missions be prepared to enable continued survival and operations in case of potential disruptions to supply missions etc., such as during global pandemics?
- In the past months, many people have been working remotely or from home, but living and working in extremely remote locations such as space, the Antarctic, or at sea during a pandemic would pose unique challenges. How are the solutions you propose for such situations different from measures that much of the population has adopted for work from home and social distancing?
- Be creative with the form your solution takes. Are you proposing a computer program or app, emergency preparedness measures or policies, a physical piece of equipment, or something completely different? Whatever you choose, be sure to clearly identify the specific issue that your solution is designed to address.
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