Integration of resilience capabilities for Critical Infrastructures into the Emergency Management set-up

We suggest an approach for maintaining and enhancing resilience that integrates the resilience capabilities of Critical Infrastructures (CIs) into the emergency management cycle (prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery). This allows emergency services to explicitly address resilience improvement measures while planning to cope with CI disruptions. To operationalise this approach we have developed a hierarchical taxonomy that classifies system resilience capabilities into intra- and interorganisational categories. Capabilities are defined as a combination of assets, resources and processes specifically arranged to accomplish a critical task and assure a key objective. They are grouped into preventive, absorptive, adaptive and restorative sets. The capabilities are identified at both the technological and the organisational level in each organisation (CI operator or responder). An overall resilience capability building cycle completes the framework, enabling a systematic implementation of relevant capabilities and making gap analysis with regard to resilience deficits. The planning of training exercises to enhance CI resilience can also benefit from the approach.