Critical Infrastructure Resilience Research Articles

Enhancing Electric Grid, Critical Infrastructure, and Societal Resilience with Resilient Nuclear Power Plants (rNPPs)

This paper, the fourth in a series, presents the results of a study conducted to explore the role current U.S. commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) play and the role a new type of NPP—a resilient nuclear power plant (rNPP)—could play in enhancing U.S. electric Grid, Critical Infrastructure, and societal resilience. A rNPP is a NPP intentionally designed, sited, interfaced, and operated in a manner to enhance Grid resilience. Four specific rNPP applications are discussed: (1) rNPPs as “flexible operations” electricity generation assets, (2) rNPPs as anchors of nuclear hybrid energy systems, (3) rNPPs as Grid Black Start Resources, and (4) rNPPs as anchors of Resilient Critical Infrastructure Islands. These four applications, individually and collectively, could enhance U.S. Grid, Critical Infrastructure, and societal resilience during normal conditions and in the wake of major national calamities stemming from natural hazards and/or malevolent human actions. rNPPs would be both tactical and strategic resilience assets, thereby extending the value proposition of nuclear energy well beyond that associated with nuclear power’s traditional baseload electricity generation. These are important topics as society grows increasingly dependent on electricity, and the natural hazard and malevolent human threat portfolio to the Grid continues to evolve.

A comprehensive security approach: bolstering Finnish cybersecurity capacity

ABSTRACTFinland, at the easternmost border of the European Union (EU), has set itself apart as a global leader in cybersecurity technology. Yet, despite Finland’s relative technological strength in this space, the government has actively intervened in the market in order to bolster cybersecurity capacity and competency. Why? There is an important distinction between the presence of technological expertise and a strategy for the security of society writ large, the latter of which necessitates resilient critical infrastructure and services within a country. To this end, the government has utilised a pre-existing logic for market intervention: Finland’s geopolitical position and its corresponding defence doctrine’s emphasis on defence of society by maintaining society-wide resilience in the event of a crisis. In comprehensive security (kokonaisturvallisuus), which includes cybersecurity, the responsibility for and the safeguarding of the vital functions of society are jointly held by private and public actors, industry and government, defence forces and citizens. Notably, given this focus on industry and civil society’s role within the provision of security, Finland’s approach provides an institutional foundation that is well suited to the realities of addressing cybersecurity at the national level.

Book Interview: Critical Infrastructures Resilience: Policy and Engineering Principles

Book Interview: <i>Critical Infrastructures Resilience: Policy and Engineering</i> <i>Principles</i>

Resilience of Critical Infrastructures: Review and Analysis of Current Approaches.

In crisis situations, systems, organizations, and people must react and deal with events that are inherently unpredictable before they occur: vital societal functions and thus infrastructures must be restored or adapted as quickly as possible. This capacity refers to resilience. Progress concerning its conceptualization has been made but it remains difficult to assess and apply in practice. The results of this article stem from a literature review allowing the analysis of current advances in the development of proposals to improve the management of infrastructure resilience. The article: (i) identifies different dimensions of resilience; (ii) highlights current limits of assessing and controlling resilience; and (iii) proposes several directions for future research that could go beyond the current limits of resilience management, but subject to compliance with a number of constraints. These constraints are taking into account different hazards, cascade effects, and uncertain conditions, dealing with technical, organizational, economical, and human domains, and integrating temporal and spatial aspects.

EU-CIRCLE methodological approach for assessing the resilience of the interconnected critical infrastructures of the virtual city scenario to climate change

This paper introduces a methodological approach for identifying the resilience of interconnected EU critical infrastructures to climate change. The proposed approach tries to establish a consequence-based modelling framework for assessing climate-dependent causal relationships between CI operation and response to climate impacts with an aim to minimise disruptions to service flows under diverse conditions. The proposed study provides a description of the virtual city’s forest fire and smoke reference scenario with their optional damages to the electricity transmission and distribution network.

A capabilities approach to the prioritization of critical infrastructure

As a consequence of the U.S. effort to increase infrastructure security and resilience, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other U.S. federal agencies have identified 16 critical infrastructure sectors that are considered vital to the nation’s well-being in terms of economic security, public health, and safety. However, there remains no articulated set of values that justify this particular list of infrastructure systems or how decision-makers might prioritize investments towards one critical sector over another during a crisis. To offer a more integrated and holistic approach to critical infrastructure resilience, this research employs the capabilities approach to human development, which offers an alternative view of critical infrastructure that focuses on the services that infrastructure provides rather than its physical condition or vulnerability to threats. This service-based perspective of infrastructure emphasizes the role of infrastructure in enabling and supporting central human capabilities that build adaptive capacity and improve human well-being. We argue that the most critical infrastructure systems are those that are essential for providing and/or supporting central human capabilities. This paper examines the DHS designation of criticality from a capabilities perspective and argues for a capabilities basis for making distinctions between those systems that should be considered most critical and those that might be temporarily sacrificed. A key implication of this work is that an across sector approach is required to reorganize existing critical infrastructure efforts around the most valuable infrastructure end-services.

Public expectations of critical infrastructure operators in times of crisis

Maintaining a minimum level of service and recovering quickly after a shock are key components of critical infrastructure (CI) resilience. Nevertheless, recent literature indicates that there is an ‘expectation gap’ in relation to the services CI operators should provide to members of the public in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. However, few of these studies have empirically investigated what members of the public expect. As such, this paper explores this under-researched area by drawing on key themes that emerged from a literature review, results from an online questionnaire-based study (N = 403), and analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews with CI operators and other relevant stakeholders. Results indicate that the public appear willing to tolerate reductions in service during crisis. The public also expect CI operators to keep them informed about progress to restore these services and answer direct queries via both traditional and social media. Based on these findings, resilience recommendations are presented.

Critical infrastructure vulnerability—A method for identifying the infrastructure service failure interdependencies

Modern society has become increasingly dependent on the resilience of critical infrastructures (CI), such as electricity distribution, telecommunications, and IT infrastructure. These systems can be interdependent in a variety of ways. The dependencies may lead to a situation where a failure in one system can cause failures in other systems. The comprehension of failure interdependencies is important for the continuous functioning of CI, especially from the viewpoints of preparedness and the response. The sector-specific interdependencies are usually well known but there is a lack of comprehension of the cross-sector interdependencies. This paper presents a qualitative method for identifying and describing the CI service failure interdependencies. The proposed method is a scenario-based approach in which CI stakeholders create a common understanding of the causes and effects of a described threat scenario. The method can be used to identify and describe the potential sector-specific and cross-sector failure interdependencies. Through the method, we have identified and described the interdependencies between the failures in CIs together with domain experts involved in the Finnish regional preparedness committees and experts working in high-level positions in CIs in Finland. The results of the case study can be utilized in the process of developing the preparedness and response activities in Finland. The method presented here can be applied in the process of identifying and describing the failure interdependencies in other countries and contexts.

Geovisualization applications to examine and explore high-density and hierarchical critical infrastructure data

Abstract. The geospatial research and development team in the National and Homeland Security Division at Idaho National Laboratory was tasked with providing tools to derive insight from the substantial amount of data currently available – and continuously being produced – associated with the critical infrastructure of the US. This effort is in support of the Department of Homeland Security, whose mission includes the protection of this infrastructure and the enhancement of its resilience to hazards, both natural and human. We present geovisual-analytics-based approaches for analysis of vulnerabilities and resilience of critical infrastructure, designed so that decision makers, analysts, and infrastructure owners and managers can manage risk, prepare for hazards, and direct resources before and after an incident that might result in an interruption in service. Our designs are based on iterative discussions with DHS leadership and analysts, who in turn will use these tools to explore and communicate data in partnership with utility providers, law enforcement, and emergency response and recovery organizations, among others. In most cases these partners desire summaries of large amounts of data, but increasingly, our users seek the additional capability of focusing on, for example, a specific infrastructure sector, a particular geographic region, or time period, or of examining data in a variety of generalization or aggregation levels. These needs align well with tenets of in-formation-visualization design; in this paper, selected applications among those that we have designed are described and positioned within geovisualization, geovisual analytical, and information visualization frameworks.

The role of minimum supply and social vulnerability assessment for governing critical infrastructure failure: current gaps and future agenda

Abstract. Increased attention has lately been given to the resilience of critical infrastructure in the context of natural hazards and disasters. The major focus therein is on the sensitivity of critical infrastructure technologies and their management contingencies. However, strikingly little attention has been given to assessing and mitigating social vulnerabilities towards the failure of critical infrastructure and to the development, design and implementation of minimum supply standards in situations of major infrastructure failure. Addressing this gap and contributing to a more integrative perspective on critical infrastructure resilience is the objective of this paper. It asks which role social vulnerability assessments and minimum supply considerations can, should and do – or do not – play for the management and governance of critical infrastructure failure. In its first part, the paper provides a structured review on achievements and remaining gaps in the management of critical infrastructure and the understanding of social vulnerabilities towards disaster-related infrastructure failures. Special attention is given to the current state of minimum supply concepts with a regional focus on policies in Germany and the EU. In its second part, the paper then responds to the identified gaps by developing a heuristic model on the linkages of critical infrastructure management, social vulnerability and minimum supply. This framework helps to inform a vision of a future research agenda, which is presented in the paper's third part. Overall, the analysis suggests that the assessment of socially differentiated vulnerabilities towards critical infrastructure failure needs to be undertaken more stringently to inform the scientifically and politically difficult debate about minimum supply standards and the shared responsibilities for securing them.

Resilience Analysis of Critical Infrastructures: A Cognitive Approach Based on Granular Computing.

A great impetus for the study of resilience in critical infrastructures (CIs) is found in the large number of initiatives and international research programmes from U.S., EU, and Asia. Politicians, decision makers, and citizens are now aware of the drastic consequences that can have the cascading effects of an adverse event in these large scale infrastructures. However, the study of resilience in CIs is challenging for several reasons, among which their large scale and interdependencies. We have to consider also that adverse events, e.g., attacks, natural hazards, or man-made disasters, suddenly occur and evolve rapidly, giving us little time to take decisions and react to them. Approximate reasoning and rapid decision making have to be considered requirements for resilience analysis of CIs. The main result presented in this paper relates to a systemic integration of granular computing (GrC) and resilience analysis for CIs. Each phase of our approach presents distinctive aspects but, overall, we argue the merit of this paper consists in the originality of the study, being this the first work that combines GrC and resilience analysis of CIs. This paper reports an illustrative example that shows how to apply our results, and a discussion on the necessary contextualizations and extensions of the GrC results to be better adapted for CIs resilience.

Risk-Based Policy Optimization for Critical Infrastructure Resilience against a Pandemic Influenza Outbreak

AbstractDecisions regarding infrastructure resilience are made under uncertainty and involve trade-offs among competing objectives. An effective way of understanding how uncertainties propagate and...

Resilience capacities assessment for critical infrastructures disruption: the READ framework (part 1)

We suggest an approach to assessing critical infrastructure resilience (CIR) as a step towards informed resource allocation and operation when planning to cope with CI disruptions in the context of emergency management or multi stakeholder planning. The approach is capabilities-based, where a capability is defined as a combination of assets, resources and routines specifically arranged to accomplish a critical task and assure a key objective. The capabilities (intra- and inter-institutional) are grouped into clusters according to the resilience phase (preventive, absorptive, adaptive and restorative) where they are invoked; and according to the system type (technical, operational, social and economic) which they belong to. An overall resilience capability building cycle completes the framework, enabling a systematic implementation of relevant capabilities and making gap analysis with regard to resilience deficits. A simplified test case exemplifying the use of the framework in the context of a regional public-private collaboration for CIR is provided.

Training as a Tool of Fostering CIP Concept Implementation: Results of a Table Top Exercise on Critical Energy Infrastructure Resilience

Training as a Tool of Fostering CIP Concept Implementation: Results of a Table Top Exercise on Critical Energy Infrastructure Resilience

Enhancing the Cyber Resilience of Critical Infrastructures through an Evaluation Methodology Based on Assurance Cases

Inability to evaluate the performance of critical adaptive systems may have a catastrophic impact on both individuals and society at large, due to society’s increased dependence on these systems. However, currently no evaluation methodology exists that adequately assesses the safety and security of critical adaptive systems. Therefore, this research aims to develop an evaluation methodology, which is capable of evaluating critical adaptive systems by reviewing dynamic architectures in real time. The evaluation methodology relies on a tool and an assurance case argument patterns catalogue, which enhance the automated construction and evaluation of assurance cases to determine the performance of critical adaptive systems. The capabilities of the methodology to automatically evaluate an adaptive system are validated on the basis of an illustrative example by employing a tool prototype. The results of the research show that the evaluation methodology provides opportunities to automatically construct and review many, yet not all, aspects of the assurance case by using the tool and the argument patterns catalogue. Therefore, even though the established methodology is largely automated to enable runtime evaluation, several actions remain to demand human interaction to ensure the safe and secure operation of critical adaptive systems.

3D visualisation tool for improving the resilience to urban and coastal flooding in Torbay, UK

Abstract Torbay, located in South West England, UK, is one of the Case Studies on the EU-funded project EU-CIRCLE, which is aimed at enhancing resilience of Critical Infrastructures (CI) to natural hazards. The region includes three urban centres (Torquay, Paignton and Brixham) and hosts more than 3 million tourists every year that contribute over £450 million to local economy. However, flooding, including coastal, fluvial and pluvial, has been a major threat to the area with more than 15 major incidents occurring since 1999. Rising sea levels, combined with increasing rainfall intensity, linked to climate change, are expected to exacerbate the problem. Better adaptation strategies are needed to safeguard CIs and services while improving resilience to climate hazards. EU-CIRCLE partners are engaged in a review of the existing capacity of flood defenses and the drainage systems in Torbay. To enhance the risk communication with the stakeholders, we adopted a high performance flood model to analyse the flood risk to Cis under a wide range of scenarios. The results are integrated into an innovative 3D visualization tool, showing the progress over time of any flood scenario in the region, via a fully interactive interface allowing stakeholders to better understand flood impacts to CIs.

Assembling and (Re)Assembling Critical Infrastructure Resilience in Khulna City, Bangladesh

Extreme Weather Events continue to cause shocking losses of life and long-term damage at scales, depths and complexities that elude robust and accountable calculation, expression and reparation. Cyclones and storm surges can wipe out entire towns, and overwhelm vulnerable built and lived environments. It was storm surges that was integral to the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina in the USA (2005), Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (2013), as well as Cyclone Nargis (2008) and the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. This paper report on work which concerns itself with the question of, given what we know already about such extreme weather events, and their associated critical infrastructure impacts and recovery trajectories, what scenarios, insights and tools might we develop to enable critical infrastructures which are resilient? With several of the world’s most climate vulnerable cities situated in well-peopled and rapidly growing urban areas near coasts, our case study of Khulna City speaks globally into a resilience discourse, through critical infrastructure, disaster risk reduction, through spatial data science and high visualisation. With a current population of 1.4 million estimated to rise to 2.9 million by 2030, dense historical Khulna City may well continue to perform a critical role in regional economic development and as well as a destination for environmental refugees. Working as part of the EU—CIRCLE consortium, we conduct a case study into cyclones and storm surges affecting the critical infrastructure then discuss salient developments of loss modelling. The research aims to contribute towards a practical framework that stimulates adaptive learning across multiple stakeholders and organisational genres.

Challenges to critical infrastructure resilience in an institutionally fragmented setting

Under the influence of neo-liberal ideals such as New Public Management, the ownership, operation, and maintenance of many Critical Infrastructures have been divided among an increasing number of public as well as private actors. Limited research has investigated the role of this institutional fragmentation for shaping resilience of Critical Infrastructures, especially in relation to recovery after infrastructure failures. The aim of this paper is to empirically explore inter-organisational challenges to response and recovery operations in the increasingly multi-actor setting characterising many contemporary Critical Infrastructures. Using the Swedish railway system as a case, the paper explores response and recovery operations following two frequent types of events. The findings show that once disruptions occur, response and recovery operations are often complicated and time-consuming. Multiple actors with diverse roles and mandates are involved in the operations, which prompts a need for communication and coordination. The case study also illustrates the important role of contractual arrangements for shaping resilience of deregulated Critical Infrastructures. The contracts incentivise actors to certain behaviours, but they also give rise to unintended side-effects. While individual actors typically make adaptations and goal trade-offs with regards to their individual tasks and actions in a way that is both locally rational and efficient, interconnections and interdependencies among the different actors give rise to cross-scale challenges to stimulating resilient operations of the infrastructure system as a whole.

Creating Stakeholder Value through Risk Mitigation Measures in the Context of Disaster Management

The resilience of critical infrastructure (CI) to extreme weather events (EWE) is one of the most demanding challenges for all stakeholders in modern society. Although partial risk reduction is feasible through the introduction and implementation of various risk mitigation measures (RMM), decision-makers at all decision-making levels are pressured to find ways to cope with the impending extreme weather and to have a thorough understanding of the EWE impacts on CI. This paper discusses how the value of RMMs can be created and assessed in a stakeholder network. Qualitative research methods, namely literature review and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), were applied as research methods. The paper examines how disaster management and value creation both converge and differ from each other. It also presents a case study on the value of various RMM and the impacts of extreme winter conditions on electricity distribution in Finland. Based on the case study, the most important value criterion was the benefits of the RMM in economic, social, and environmental terms. At a fundamental level, the value of RMM should be expressed not only in terms of money but also in regard to safety, security, societal acceptability, CI dependability, and other typically intangible criteria. Moreover, the results reveal that the interrelationship of value creation and disaster management offers new insights to both approaches.

Satellite-Based Big Data for Resilience of Critical Infrastructures Subjected to Natural and Man-Made Disasters

Satellite-Based Big Data for Resilience of Critical Infrastructures Subjected to Natural and Man-Made Disasters