Good Practices for Critical Infrastructure Resilience: a classification and assessment framework

Abstract

The fast-growing occurrence of unexpected events affecting Critical Infrastructure (CI) systems in recent years fostered a shift from a protection-focused approach to CI Resilience (CIR). In this context, the increasing number of interdependencies, which generate domino effects and cascading failures, led to the call for establishing collaborative approaches and partnerships at the regional, national or international level. To support and implement CIR strategies, governments and CI operators often rely on Good Practices (GPs), generally defined as methods or techniques that are applied to solve existing problems producing effective results and bringing benefits to the users. Despite the high number of GPs, they are often insufficient to cover the wide spectrum of capabilities required for effective Emergency Management (EM). In this study, the systematic analysis and review of scientific literature and European projects in the CIR domain, led to the identification of 53 GPs that have proven to be effective in managing CIR. To enable comparison among the GPs the study proceeds with the development of a framework for classifying and assessing GPs according to their application context, the activities and functionalities covered, and the EM capabilities they are able to support. From a research perspective, the framework offers a robust background for future assessment and benchmarking of CIR related GPs; it is also useful for practitioners to assess and select the most suitable GPs under different institutional and operational contexts.