Good Governance for Critical Infrastructure Resilience
Critical infrastructures are the backbone of modern, interconnected economies. The disruption of key systems and essential services - such as telecommunications, energy or water supply, transportation or finance - can cause substantial economic damage. This report looks at how to boost critical infrastructure resilience in a dynamic risk landscape, and discusses policy options and governance models to promote up-front resilience investments. Based on an international survey, the report analyses the progressive shift of critical infrastructure policies from asset protection to system resilience. The findings are reflected in a proposed Policy Toolkit for the Governance of Critical Infrastructure Resilience, which can guide governments in taking a more coherent, preventive approach to protecting and sustaining essential services.
Governance challenges for critical infrastructure resilience
This chapter reflects upon the changing context for critical infrastructure policies and presents a series of governance challenges for policy design and implementation in this area. Addressing the increased interdependencies and complexity of critical infrastructure requires a shift from protection of individual assets to a system’ approach to resilience. This chapter proposes a series of building blocks to adopt such system’s approach and discusses the roles of governments and infrastructure stakeholders in critical infrastructure resilience. It concludes by highlighting governance challenges that policy-makers need to overcome to adjust critical infrastructure policies to the dynamic risk landscape of our time.