Critical Infrastructure Awareness Required by Civil Emergency Planning

Abstract

Modern societies are increasingly dependent on a set of critical products and services, which comprise the critical infrastructure (CI). This makes critical infrastructures increasingly important as a planning factor in case of emergencies. For that reason, we studied a number of emergencies and a small set of local emergency plans from the perspective of how first responder currently take critical infrastructures into account. Our initial analysis indicates that civil emergency plans lack consideration for critical infrastructures. First responders, such as police and fire brigades, are often unaware of that their operations and non-evacuated citizens depend on critical infrastructure. Therefore, we recommend that emergency preparedness plans, training, situational awareness, and the decision-cycle of first responders and emergency management need to pay more attention to critical infrastructures. This decreases the risk that emergencies are worsened due to second-order effects of failing infrastructure, those emergency operations themselves are hampered, and that more casualties occur.