Critical infrastructures: a review from a complex adaptive systems perspective

Abstract

Critical infrastructures are complex systems that may be studied in large interdisciplinary teams. Interaction between researchers in these interdisciplinary teams can suffer from the lack of a shared view on the object of study or the meaning of words. To facilitate the understanding of complex infrastructure systems, we reviewed literature on complex systems from different fields. We created a three-layered framework that clarifies the relationships between the properties and the different levels of complex systems. We illustrated our framework with an example of a transportation system that shows how this complex system may be understood in terms of the framework.