Abstract: While accepted as part of critical infrastructure (CI) resilience, no consensus exists on how to measure the exact
minimum level of service or the rapidity of rapidly restoring services. The H2020 European project IMPROVER
(Improved risk evaluation and implementation of resilience concepts to critical infrastructure) suggests to use the
public?s declared tolerance levels for both minimum level of service and rapidity of service restoration as criteria
with which to evaluate if the resilience of a given CI is resilient enough. This paper demonstrates the development
of a questionnaire-based methodology to determine public tolerance levels. It then tests this methodology via a
pilot case study at IMPROVER?s Hungarian Highway Living Lab. The paper argues that public tolerance levels
are a reasonable choice for resilience evaluation criteria and demonstrates that the questionnaire-based
methodology permits one to evaluate public perception in such a way as to compare it to technical resilience
analyses.

Abstract: In this paper, utilising the core Project AF8 Alpine Fault earthquake scenario, we detail hazard exposure, impacts, and recovery of interdependent critical infrastructure networks across the energy, transportation, water & waste, and telecommunications sectors across the South Island of New Zealand. Asset failures are simulated across each individual network, based on shaking intensities, exposure to co-seismic hazards and estimated component fragilities, which have been further refined and validated through expert elicitation. Network disruptions are then propagated across an interdependent network framework to quantify and delineate the spatial reach of both direct and indirect failures. By incorporating recovery strategies, temporal changes in service levels are quantified to offer insights into expected interdependent network performance and the possible disconnection of communities from the nationally connected networks, otherwise not apparent when studying each infrastructure in isolation.

Abstract: This paper reviews current work on a model of the cascading effects of Critical Infrastructure (CI) failures during disasters. Based upon the contributions of 26 professionals, we have created a reliable model for the interaction among sixteen CIs. An internal CI model can be used as a core part of a number of larger models, each of which are tailored to a specific disaster in a specific location.

Abstract: Continuity of Operations (COOP) planning helps ensure that municipal agencies maintain essential functions when disasters threaten critical infrastructures. COOP planning is especially important for Public-Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), which must continue to answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders during crises. However, COOP planning guidelines often focus on threats to cyber-physical infrastructures rather than outbreaks of infectious disease that threaten the human work arrangements—social infrastructures—agencies rely on to perform essential functions. This study reports preliminary findings from interviews with U.S. PSAP officials who developed plans to decentralize 911 facilities, networks, and personnel to maintain essential functions during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings suggest revisions to COOP planning guidelines that consider requirements for redundant, diverse, and interdependent cyber-physical-social infrastructures.

Abstract: Increasing resilience is a core interest in critical infrastructure (CI) protection that involves many challenges. It is necessary to agree on a common understanding of resilience and identify potential strategies to improve it.
Once this is done, the question arises how to choose among these strategies. We propose to decide based on a game-theoretic framework that allows identification of optimal actions under various scenarios. This framework considers different threat scenarios as attacks to the CI and the identified strategies to improve resilience as defense strategies for the CI. Since the payoff of the game, namely the resilience of the CI, can hardly be measured with certainty we choose an extension of classical game theory that allows taking uncertainty into account and still finds provably optimal solutions. This approach is especially useful in a situation where we aim to optimize a quantity that is difficult to measure (such as resilience). The result of this analysis is two-fold: it identifies an optimal defense but also provides information about the resilience in the worst case. The approach is illustrated with a small example using a publicly available implementation.

Abstract: With the current international crises such as the Ukrainian war, the ongoing climate change, or the interruptions in international supply chains and recent incidents like the earthquake in Turkey or the Ohio train derailment, it becomes more obvious that “just” protecting the society’s critical services and infrastructures will not be sufficient enough in the future. Services and infrastructures need to become more resilient to the effects of intentional threats as well as disasters caused by natural hazards to keep essential services operational and protect the people’s wellbeing. Accordingly, the solutions for achieving that and making society more resilient need to look further, beyond the boundaries of one infrastructure and beyond purely technical aspects. In this way, evolving towards a resilient society is a multi-dimensional problem integrating different viewpoints. In the technology-driven world we are living today, the social relations and interactions among individuals have become more important than ever and organizational structures influence the success or failure of technological solutions. Furthermore, many frameworks for societal/social/community resilience include as a metric the availability of essential services/critical infrastructure. Therefore, today’s technical solutions for protecting Critical Infrastructures need to play together with novel organizational, communal, and individual concepts as well as fulfill requirements from the economic, environmental, ethical and societal domains. In this panel, we will look at the impacts Critical Infrastructures are facing due to current crisis situations in different parts of the world and the effects this has on society. We will discuss among the panelists and with the audience on how existing and future concepts, methodologies and tools could help to improve resilience from a technical, organizational, and societal perspective.

Abstract: This WiPe article presents first insights from two German research projects (one ongoing, one completed) on the double role of municipal administrations in crisis management. The ongoing project examines the municipal crisis management during COVID-19, the completed one focused on the 2015/2016 refugee situation in Germany. While crisis management has previously rather been associated with “blue-light organizations”, these two circumstances rather called for a predominantly administrative crisis management. While adapting to this new role, administrations had to maintain key public services: They had to perform as crisis managers while maintaining their function as a critical infrastructure despite being affected themselves for several reasons. Since 2015, public administration in Germany has found itself in almost constant crisis management mode, giving opportunity to learn and to adjust self-perception. Based on empirical analyses of interview data we aim to discuss the following questions: How did the two roles influence each other in the situations mentioned? Has anything changed between these situations?

Abstract: In this article, we want to present the concept for a risk management approach to assess the condition of critical infrastructure networks within metropolitan areas, their interdependencies among each other and the potential cascading effects. In contrast to existing solutions, this concept aims at providing a holistic view on the variety of interconnected networks within a city and the complex dependencies among them. Therefore, stochastic models and simulations are integrated into risk management to improve the assessment of cascading effects and support decision makers in crisis situations. This holistic view will allow risk managers at the city administration as well as emergency organizations to understand the full consequences of an incident and plan mitigation actions accordingly. Additionally, the approach will help to further strengthen the resilience of the entire city as well as the individual critical infrastructures in crisis situations.

Abstract: Coping capacities (CCs) are often implemented at Critical Infrastructure (CI) facilities to ensure a continuous supply of vital services and products for a population during lifeline disruptions. Through various restrictions, these redundant backups are frequently limited and, hence, only allow a supply continuity for a short duration. The capacity depletes with the duration of the disruptions. In this paper, we discuss how this decrease is evaluated in disaster management. To get an enhanced insight, we introduce to a representative decision problem and used a demonstrative example of a power outage to discuss how decision maker consider the effect of CC depletion and how analytical approaches could address this issue. For doing so an expert survey and an analytical approach were implemented and applied. The comparison and the discussion of the results motivate further research directions on this topic.

Abstract: Understanding critical infrastructures and in particular protecting them in case of natural or man-made threats or disasters is the objective of our research. As use case, the security of the power supply in the year 2030 for the city of Karlsruhe was selected. This scenario contains interdependencies between the electrical power grid and IT components as well as critical infrastructures such as water supply and health care. To simulate the critical infrastructure, their dependencies and potential measures to mitigate effects, agent based simulation models have been developed and applied. The ultimate objective of the research activity is to develop a holistic analysis framework to quantify and evaluate requirements and design decisions of the many players in such complex infrastructures.

Abstract: Information technologies and other critical infrastructures are interconnected in ways that can lead to vulnerabilities in the ability of these infrastructures to perform during natural disasters and acts of terrorism either to reduce adverse consequences or provide needed emergency response services. This research applies and adapts a number of indicators of infrastructure interdependency based on the authors' earlier research to determine where weak points and strengths occur in the interconnections between infrastructure technology and other infrastructure support services such as electric power and transportation, and where weak points create vulnerability that can be improved for more effective response in emergencies.