Understanding Critical Infrastructure -- Management Challenges for the 21st Century

This paper describes how infrastructure is defined as the network of physical structures and information that support a continual flow of goods, information, and services. Infrastructure is essential to maintain quality of life, economic growth and national security. Possible disruptions to services supported by physical infrastructure can affect the functions of daily life, businesses and government activities. Such disruptions can also have cascading or escalating effects throughout a country’s economy and social infrastructure. This paper introduces the basic concepts of infrastructure interdependencies and critical infrastructure management compared with infrastructure management concepts applied to a single type of infrastructure, the need to capture the complex interactions between different types of infrastructure, and the recent advances in critical infrastructure management.