Societal vulnerability to electricity supply failure

Today's modern society depends on a number of infrastructures to operate. Failures in these systems cause significant economic impacts and can also endanger people's lives and health. Due to the high importance of these infrastructures, they've received increasing attention in recent years and are referred to as critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure in the energy sector is considered to be one of the most important infrastructure networks significantly contributing to ensuring the functional continuity of the society. Its importance is also perceived in terms of interconnections and correlations with other critical infrastructure sectors as well as in terms of electricity interconnectivity in Europe, as in the interconnected European system the effects are spreading across the systems of all single country transmission system operators very quickly. For these reasons, the European Union considers this sector to be strategic and of European importance. The aim of this article is to clarify the primary causes of the disruption of large-scale electricity supply and their impact on the functioning of society, focusing on the vulnerability of urbanized large settlements - urban agglomerations - in the event of long-lasting blackout disturbances. It contains a presentation of the importance of electricity for society, the definition, and the analysis of the causes of disruption to large-scale electricity supply continuity, consequences of a large-scale blackout on community functioning and its basic functions, and current knowledge on the vulnerability of large urban agglomerations to long-term disruption of electricity supply and possible solutions.