Essential Resilience

About this book

Three mornings, three crises, one question

In October 2026 the Dubai Chambers Centre for Responsible Business ran Sustainability 365 under the theme Essential Resilience: Securing Food, Business and Communities. ESGweise designed and ran three 90-minute online sessions for its Purpose Academy.

Each was a live simulation. Every participant ran a Dubai business on their own phone, decided round by round, and saw what the rest of the room chose before learning what their own choices cost.

No participant is named in this book. Figures are taken from the anonymised session records.

Contents

Inside

Chapter 1 · The standards

ISO 22301 on one page

ISO 22301:2019 is the international standard for business continuity management. Its operational core is one lifecycle, and every round in the three simulations mapped to a step of it.

Recovery time objective: the time within which an activity must be resumed, set inside the point where its loss becomes unacceptable.

Chapter 1 · The standards

The UAE's own standard, and the rules that bite

AE/SCNS/NCEMA 7000:2021 is the UAE national standard, issued by NCEMA and stated as applicable to all UAE entities. It is built on ISO 22301 and covers the same lifecycle under different clause numbers.

UAE rules built into the rounds

• Federal Law No. 3 of 2020: registered food traders hold designated strategic stock and release it on the authorities' direction.
• Ministry of Economy pricing policy, 2 January 2025: rises on nine essential goods need prior approval.
• Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021: changes to pay or hours need written consent, recorded with MoHRE.
• ISO 22316:2017: collaboration beyond the firm is an attribute of a resilient organisation.

2

Business · 14 October 2026

The 90-Day Squeeze

A shipping corridor far from Dubai closes and stays shut for most of twelve weeks. Freight rises, lead times stretch, working capital tightens. Players ran a food importer, a restaurant group or a light manufacturer: 12 decisions on supply, money and people.

What the room did

• Seven of eight protected their critical lines only, and told customers which was which.
• In week 6 the room was unanimous: the bank's disruption facility, and staff redeployed rather than cut. Nobody laid anyone off.
• Seven of eight ran a lessons-learned session in week 12. Three still chose to stay just-in-time.

The finding: service held at 99% and trust at 96, paid for with cash. The room ended with 4.8 weeks of runway; doing nothing kept 7.5 weeks and lost two thirds of service.

The 90-Day Squeeze · results

3

Food · 21 October 2026

Empty Shelf

The same corridor closes, seen from the food shelf. Food importers, restaurants and grocers faced refrigerated containers rerouted, panic buying, a substitute batch with an undeclared allergen and eight tonnes of short-dated stock: 12 decisions, four options each.

What the room did

• Every player held prices on the nine essential goods and applied to the Ministry, rather than raising them.
• Five of six recalled the mislabelled batch and told the authority the same day.
• Four of six gave short-dated stock to the UAE Food Bank instead of dumping it.
• Nobody moved chilled lines to a regional producer in week 1, the move that protected service most.

The finding: the room stayed inside the law under pressure, and finished at 100% service and trust 91. The gap was the first week: the strategy chosen before the disruption.

Empty Shelf · results

4

Communities · 22 October 2026

Who Do You Protect

A storm floods a Dubai district. A café group, a delivery company and a uniform workshop decide who gets paid, who gets told what, who gets helped and who waits: 16 decisions, four options each, three and a half minutes a round.

What the room did

• Five of six paid flooded staff in full on day 1 and sent food and water to their accommodation.
• Every player credited staff, neighbours and civil defence by name when the press called, and volunteered to lead the district's emergency plan.
• Faced with a rumour that the business was closing, the room split in half: meet every shift in person, or threaten whoever spread it.

The finding: the clock mattered. Players who ran out of time on some rounds scored 45; those who decided every round scored 71. Generosity had a price: nobody finished with more than six weeks of cash.

Who Do You Protect · results

Chapter 5

What all three taught

For your organisation

Run it with your own team

The same simulation can be built around your business and the disruption you worry about most: a supplier failure, a site emergency, a liquidity squeeze. Your people decide on their own phones; you see the room's choices live, and every round maps to the clause it tests.

• A 90-minute session, online or in the room
• Scenarios written for your sector and grounded in UAE rules
• An anonymised results summary afterwards, with the habits that separated the top scores