Threats to infrastructures: consolidation, collaboration and future orientation

The 'National Infrastructure' is seldom out of the news. Although the infrastructure is not always easy to define it includes things such as utilities (water, energy, gas), transportation systems and communications. We often hear about real or perceived threats to the infrastructure such as terrorism, natural disasters, cyber attacks and even riots and industrial disputes. There is little consensus about how we should protect the national infrastructure now, and even less about how we should go about it in the future. Moreover, all countries face such challenges and meet them in different ways. The purpose of this project is to consider the ways in which we think about protecting the national infrastructure and to examine the differences in how countries go about protecting their infrastructures. This will help us to understand how working across academia, across sectors and across countries can help us to act in terms of future scenarios.

In terms of understanding how different countries respond to threats to their national infrastructures (and how their populations might respond) the media often make generalisations about nations and their infrastructures. In terms of the recent Japanese Tsunami (2011), for example, the media made many references to the robustness of Japan's industrial base and the resilience of the Japanese people. In Hurricane Katrina in the US (2005) the media was concerned with inequalities in US society and the lack of integration between different government agencies in dealing with the disruption. These media and popular representations point, in a simple way, to national differences in response, but there is a need to go further and examine how and why different countries respond in different ways. In this research we will look at national economic and social factors and, alongside interviews with policy makers, we will construct 'timelines' of infrastructure protection policy to see exactly how and why policy changes in countries over time. We will select a range of countries to represent different political and social forms (US, UK, New Zealand, Japan and Germany). The analysis of these timelines will suggest why national infrastructure policy changes over time. We will then test our results using case studies of actual disasters and expert groups of policy makers across countries. Ultimately this will help us to understand national infrastructure protection changes over time, what drives such changes and the different ways in which countries prepare themselves for infrastructure threats.

It is also important that we think about how we organise research in this area in the future. Through a series of 'leadership activities' the research will bring together researchers in different academic disciplines and people from the public, private and third sectors. This is not the first time that this has been done, but the purpose of doing this is to discover how work across disciplines and sectors can be best organised in future. In order to keep groups working with each other, and to find out more about how inter-disciplinary groups can work well, the groups formed in these activities will participate in simulation and gaming exercises on threats to national infrastructures. Finally, it is important to think about future threats to the infrastructure and we will organise innovative activities that involve graphically describing future threats and how we might respond to them.

The beneficiaries of this research will be both national and international. Nationally there are a number of governmental bodies interested in research on 'threats to national infrastructure' including the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, Civil Contingencies Secretariat and CPNI (Centre for Protection of the National Infrastructure). There are also regional authorities which might be interested and I have previously worked with the Emergency Planning Department of Essex County Council, Essex Fire and Rescue, London Resilience and Birmingham Resilience. Internationally, groups such as the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) will be beneficiaries as will third sector organisations such as the Institute of Race Relations (who have taken an interest in my work on security and equality).
Within the wider public the leadership activities which I have considered are beneficial in terms of increasing public awareness of this issue as they are engaging and show how inter-disciplinary working is necessary to meet future threats to the national infrastructure.
There are three particular benefits arising from this research.
Firstly, in terms of improving national security the research identifies those factors which are most relevant to dealing with threats to national infrastructures in context. For example, the research considers how protection of the national infrastructure is influenced by welfare systems, economic factors and equalities. This is important in terms of identifying factors that are significant in infrastructure protection particularly in times of economic recession and social change. Through the use of case studies and policy interviews this research will be important in considering how threats to the national infrastructure can be considered with reference to the national, social and economic context. These factors will be disseminated not only through academic publications but also through reports and the project website. The impact of this is likely to be significantly enhanced through the integrated leadership activities which have been planned.
Secondly, in terms of shaping and enhancing the effectiveness of the public sector the research considers the extent to which policy borrowing and international sharing of practice may be of benefit in protecting the national infrastructure. Those working in the public sector in this area will be the subjects of this research as well as generating new knowledge.
Thirdly, this research will develop important skills for the researchers involved in terms of inter-disciplinary and cross-sectoral working which are vital for the future of research in this area.