A Resilience Framework for Critical Infrastructure

Infrastructures facilitate economic growth, protect human health and the environment and promote welfare and prosperity. Modern societies, therefore, rely heavily on continuous and reliable services provided critical infrastructure. Destruction to the infrastructure can lead to severe economic and social impacts and can also lead to loss of lives. To further complicate matters, modern infrastructures operate as a ‘system of systems’ with many interactions and interdependencies among these systems. Thus damage in one infrastructure system can cascade and result in failures and cascading effects onto all related and dependent infrastructures. To minimise such damages and impacts, it is vital to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure. This paper intends to present a resilience framework for critical infrastructure. Firstly a resilience definition has been established by reviewing the existing definitions. Then existing resilience frameworks were analysed to identity the suitable components for the proposed framework for critical infrastructure. Finally a layered approach framework has been developed to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure. The framework was developed based on comprehensive literature review. It was further validated with stakeholder feedback sessions. The framework consists of 4 layers that are independent and interdependent. Climatic hazards including current and future climate change, infrastructure, their networks and interdependencies, risks and impacts and capacities are the main layers. Each layer will have its unique features and its relationships with other layers. Climatic hazards will contribute to increased risks and impacts. Critical infrastructure is more vulnerable when exposed to climate hazard and uncertainty of climate change and will lead to risks and impacts. The capacities will help to determine the resilience level and will help to reduce the risks and impact. The framework serves as a diagnostic model to determine the existing resilience level of critical infrastructure and to improve the resilience by making necessary changes to the layers.