Reducing Vulnerability of Critical Infrastructures

The methodology proposed in this manual enables the study of two important types of interdependencies between essential infrastructures:physical and geographical. It involves defining a study area and analyzing the customer-supplier relationships between critical infrastructures and the temporal and spatial consequences of the unavailability of a given resource. These consequences are presented as curves, which depict the propagation of domino effects over time in the study area. The methodology also permitsan analysis of how critical infrastructureswill fail and enables the identificationof infrastructures vulnerable to these failures. Overlaying these layers of informationallows areas that are most sensitiveto geographical interdependencies to be identified and mitigation measures to be implemented.