Impact: Any weakness in critical infrastructure will cascade into other systems, destroying society’s functioning and turns case

Robert Osei-Kyei, Vivian Tam, Mingxue Ma, and Fidelis Mashiri, “Critical review of the threats affecting the building of critical infrastructure resilience.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. June 15, 2021. The authors are professors at the School of Engineering, Western Sydney University. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102316

In these contemporary times, critical infrastructures (CIs) are of great importance because they are physically and logically essential to a nation. Importantly, CIs are necessary to support public welfare, economic growth and government day-to-day functions. Examples of CIs include supply of energy (oil, gas, and electricity), information and communication technology (including telecommunications and navigation), nuclear industry, water supply, healthcare (hospital, medicines, and vaccines), provision of financial services (banks and insurance), civil administration (government functions and facilities), and function of transportation systems (road transport, railway transport, and air traffic). CIs are always known to be highly interconnected and complex. This means that the operation of one CI is dependent on the operation of other CIs. For instance, steady supply of electricity is fundamental to the function of water and telecommunication systems. In this regard, any disruption of a single CI could lead to cascading effects in other CIs, and further trigger regional or national impacts. The complicated interdependencies of CIs network brings difficulties in managing potential crisis. Considering the complicated interdependencies of CIs network, in recent years it has become very necessary for many governments to build resilient CI systems which will ensure the continuing function of a nation's economy. Generally, CI resilience refers to the ability of CIs to absorb, resist, adapt and recover from the effects caused by a disruptive event. In fact, protecting CIs is good, however, developing resilient CIs system is considered prudent because it allows a country to adapt to change and withstand unexpected situations or pandemics. More importantly, resilient CIs system enable a country to develop urban community resilience which ensures that communities can absorb disturbance while maintaining their functions and structure. However, different forms of threats including natural disasters, cyber threats, technical damages, human errors, and malicious attacks have the possibility to disrupt governments' efforts to develop resilient CIs system or network. Essentially, some threats/hazards would not only cause a disruption to a government's efforts to develop CI resilience but can lead to a total breakdown of a country's CIs network, thus making the national economy and society unfunctional.