Incorporation of resilience assessment in Critical Infrastructure risk assessment frameworks

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of Critical Infrastructure (CI) resilience and its relationship with current Risk Assessment (RA) processes. It proposes a framework for resilience assessment of CI, which integrates the resilience paradigm into the RA process according to ISO 31000. The framework consists of three levels, namely (a) asset (focus on individual CI assets), (b) system (focus on dependencies between CI assets) and (c) national or regional (focus on societal aspects). It is applicable to individual CI or their combinations, accounting both for existing RA processes, for interdependencies and their effect on interconnected CI, while at the same time employing current, available resilience analysis tools and methodologies. This approach is also compatible with the current European guidelines for national RA applied by the EU Member States.