Abstract
Critical infrastructures (CIs) are assets, systems, or parts thereof that are essential for the maintenance of socioeconomic functions, health, safety and well-being of people. The exposure of CIs to natural and man-made hazards poses a risk to the economy and society. The spatial distribution of CIs and their economic value are a prerequisite for quantifying risk and planning suitable protection and adaptation measures. However, the incompleteness and inconsistency of existing information on CIs hamper their integration into large-scale risk frameworks. We present here the ‘HARmonized grids of Critical Infrastructures in EUrope’ (HARCI-EU) dataset. It represents major CIs in the transport, energy, industry and social sectors at 1 km2 expressed in sector-specific, economically-relevant units. The HARCI-EU grids were produced by integrating geospatial and statistical data from multiple sources. Correlation analysis performed against independent metrics corroborates the approach showing average Pearson coefficients ranging between 0.61 and 0.95 across the sectors. HARCI-EU provides a consistent mapping of CIs in key sectors that can serve as exposure information for large-scale risk assessments in Europe.
Highlights
Background & SummaryCritical infrastructures (CIs) are physical or virtual assets or systems of assets that are vital to ensuring health, well-being and security of people and whose disruption or destruction may undermine communities or countries at large[1,2]
Transport infrastructure can be represented in a Geographical Information System (GIS) using alternative data structures: roads or railways are typically represented by line segments, while ports and airports by points or polygons
Future developments should focus on expanding HARCI-EU to encompass further CI categories
Summary
Critical infrastructures (CIs) are physical or virtual assets or systems of assets that are vital to ensuring health, well-being and security of people and whose disruption or destruction may undermine communities or countries at large[1,2]. Transport infrastructure can be represented in a Geographical Information System (GIS) using alternative data structures: roads or railways are typically represented by line segments, while ports and airports by points or polygons. Such variety in format and spatial representation raises a series of technical problems for their use in a common risk assessment framework. In order to compare impacts of a given hazardous event on different infrastructure types and sectors using a consistent methodology applicable at large scale, there is need for harmonized exposure information. Future developments should focus on expanding HARCI-EU to encompass further CI categories
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