Critical infrastructure resilience: National approaches in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Australia

Abstract

Securitization of the critical infrastructure as an important factor of national security has been among the aspects of wider changes in the security discourse since the end of the Cold War. The concept of critical infrastructure protection, initially focused on countering the terrorism threat, has been changing and expanding, from adopting the 'all-hazard approach', until the recent prevalence of the strategy of resilience in managing strategic security and operational risks. The sources of those risks are found mainly in climate-change induced natural hazards, as well as in global challenges of interconnection and interdependencies of critical infrastructure. The paper discusses the concepts of resilience and critical infrastructure, and then analyses the approaches to critical infrastructure protection and resilience in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Analyzed are the official documents - strategies, laws and by-laws, reviews and guidelines produced by the governmental bodies of the mentioned countries, with the aim of clarification of the concept, as well as the country-specific variations in its operationalization.

Keywords

• critical infrastructure
• resilience
• all-hazard approach
• risk management
• national security