Jose Mari Sarriegi

Collaborative Modeling of Awareness in Critical Infrastructure Protection

While awareness is acknowledged as a key factor in crisis management, much is vague as to the meaning of the awareness concept, its measurement, how awareness impacts the lifecycle of a crisis and how awareness can be promoted. This vagueness, we hypothesize, potentially reflects the immaturity of crisis management theory. This in turn obscures the landscape of leading crisis indicators, which then leaves crucial clues for the development of crisis management approaches in the attention shadow. In the absence of codified knowledge, the collaborative approach known as Group Model Building employing system dynamics, where modeling experts elicit and unify fragmented, tacit knowledge from domain experts, is worth exploring. We have done so in the context a European project on crisis management of large-scale power cut crises. We describe our preliminary results and propose a concept model relating awareness, leading indicators, and policies for crisis prevention and mitigation.

A framework to improve the resilience of critical infrastructures

Purpose – This study aims to present a resilience framework for critical infrastructures (CIs) taking into account internal and external stakeholders involved in a crisis situation and covering the four resilience dimensions defined in the literature, as well as providing practical policies to facilitate their implementation in practice. Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology consists of an iterative process in which different research methods such as group model building, multiple case study and Delphi method are applied to gather knowledge from experts in the field. Findings – This study presents a holistic and easily applicable framework for CIs where: first, a list of resilience policies is defined and second, the influence of each resilience policy in the three resilience life-cycle stages is assessed. Originality/value – This study overcomes three of the main limitations that current resilience building frameworks have: some of them only focus on one resilience dimension without cove...

The Role of Critical Infrastructures’ Interdependencies on the Impacts Caused by Natural Disasters

Recent natural disasters have highlighted society’s dependency on the correct functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs). The existing interdependencies among CIs complicate matters further, since a failure in a CI can spread through cascading effects to other infrastructures or sectors. Thus society’s welfare becomes severely affected, complicating emergency response and increasing the total impact of natural disasters. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the important role that affected CIs have on the overall impact of a natural disaster. We have developed a simulation model that represents a huge storm affecting the energy system, transport and food CIs on a small island. Through this simulation model we can show the effects associated with CIs and the effects of applying crisis management policies.

Resilience Building Policies and their Influence in Crisis Prevention, Absorption and Recovery

Abstract Resilience building has become one of the most promising strategies for crisis managers to improve the security and proper functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs). Therefore, crisis managers will benefit from both general and detailed guidance for building and maintaining CI resilience levels. This paper aims to contribute to this purpose by presenting a framework that helps crisis managers improve the resilience level of CIs based on internal and external aspects of the CI that are often overlooked. This framework proposes sixteen resilience policies that have been suggested as influential in developing resilience. The influence and relative effectiveness of each policy in promoting the resilience of the system is postulated. The framework was reviewed and validated through an expert panel and a Delphi process providing grounded support for the evaluation and prioritization of the resilience policies. The results show that internal policies are the most influential ones when avoiding a crisis occurrence and external policies are most helpful when bouncing back to the usual state.

Analysis of disasters impacts and the relevant role of critical infrastructures for crisis management improvement

Purpose – Disasters are complex phenomena, by diverse nature and whose management is complicated. An efficient analysis of potential impacts that may result as consequence of a disaster has to be conducted to improve the preparation and response in face of future events. Design/methodology/approach – A review of impact evaluation methodologies and real disasters’ impacts has been performed to develop an impact indicators’ framework. Then, a questionnaire has been administered to critical infrastructure (CI) operators to identify CI dependencies and their consequences. Findings – A proper impact analysis improves learning about the consequences of a disaster and the way those impacts should be managed. Moreover, current impact evaluation methodologies do not make special focus on CIs even if their proper functioning is essential for society’s welfare. Crisis managers such as civil protection, emergency services and local authorities among others need to be aware of the importance of critical infrastructure...

Implementation Methodology of the Resilience Framework

Failure of Critical Infrastructures (CIs) can have severe consequences for our societies. Therefore, CI resilience has attracted increasing attention in industries and policy-making. However, empirical studies on CI resilience are rare. In particular, research on the implementation of policies aiming at an improvement of CI resilience is lacking. Using Group Model Building combined with the Delphi method, and surveys we have developed a framework to improve CI resilience. This research identifies policies to enhance CI resilience against major industrial accidents across four dimensions (technical, organizational, economic and social) and proposes a temporal order to ensure that the benefit of policy implementation can be maximized.

Policies to Improve Resilience against Major Industrial Accidents

A major industrial accident is an unpredictable event which triggers a disruption in a Critical Infrastructure (CI). This disruption can spread through other sectors, affecting not only the CI where the triggering event takes place but the whole society as well. In the case of major industrial accidents, system resilience consists of both the resilience of the CI (internal resilience) and resilience of society (external resilience). Resilience is the system’s ability to reduce the probability of failure, the consequences from failure and the response and recovery time. However, little is known about how to achieve a high resilience level. In this paper, using the information gathered from experts and examining several major industrial accidents, we derive twelve policies that enhance the system’s resilience level. The definitions of these policies are clarified through real case examples where the consequences of their use or lack of use are explained.