Managing and reducing social vulnerabilities from coupled critical infrastructures
Critical infrastructures are the systems and facilities by which essential services are supplied. These services include food, water, public health services, energy, transport, information and communication, and waste removal and disposal.
Critical infrastructures have always been dependent on each other. However, recent decades have witnessed a much greater and tighter integration and interdependence between them – effectively the creation of a ’system of systems’ which has no single owner or operator. While this has often yielded improved service and convenience and promoted greater efficiency, it has also led to increased social vulnerabilities in the face of accidental or intentional disruption. Today, a disruption or malfunction often has much greater impacts than was typically the case in the past, and can also propagate to other systems, resulting in further additional disruptions.
In 2005, IRGC began an examination of five critical infrastructures: electric power supply, gas supply, urban water supply and waste water treatment, rail transport and systems for general information and communication services (ICT). These share a number of similarities: all involve distributed complex physical networks; they are organised along similar value chains with elements embedded within the socio-political-economic framework; and, their operating strategies and end-user behaviours are subject to significant and evolving contextual changes and risk-shaping factors.
Our work focused both on the risks associated with individual infrastructures and the risks associated with the increasing interdependence between them – as in the use of ICT to monitor and control almost all other critical infrastructures. We examined each system and its operational and socio-economic environments separately, and also viewed the interdependent infrastructures as, collectively, a highly complex “system of systems”. In particular, we explored four issues: What are the factors which have promoted and caused tighter integration and greater interdependency among critical infrastructures? What are the vulnerabilities and main drivers behind this tighter integration? What are the political and institutional short-comings? What technical, management and organisational strategies are needed to reduce social vulnerabilities to disruption of these systems? What policy options could be used to promote the adoption of such socially desirable technical, management and organisational strategies?
Our work on critical infrastructures has been funded from IRGC general funds. We thank all the organisations who contribute to IRGC in this way.
The project has been led by Wolfgang Kröger and Granger Morgan on behalf of the Scientific and Technical Council (S&TC).
Thoughout the project, IRGC has benefited enormously from contributions by staff at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre’s (EC JRC) Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen based in Ispra, Italy, Delft University of Technology, Ernst Basler and Partners, Zurich, as well as individual contributions by many S&TC members. We also thank staff at Oliver Wyman’s London office for their assistance in the drafting of the Policy Brief.
For further information about IRGC’s work in the risk governance of critical infrastructures, please send an email to malin.samuelsson@irgc.org