GCRI · Critical Infrastructure
Critical Infrastructure
Reliability and resilience of lifeline infrastructure and the services on which communities and economies rely. Critical Infrastructure is an established platform of The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation.
- STEM methods
- 12
- Canonical methods this field applies
- Topics
- 9
- Subject pages in the field
- Counterparts
- 3
- Platforms in shared fields across the network
- Report series
- 2
- Reports series it contributes to
How the work runs.
Asset criticality register
Lifeline system A · Register v9
Critical assets
| SS-12 | Electricity | Tier 1 | Flood 1-in-100 | 22 |
| WTW-2 | Water | Tier 1 | Flood 1-in-100 | 30 |
| DX-1 | Telecom | Tier 2 | Heat | 8 |
| H-Campus | Health | Tier 1 | Earthquake | 95 |
| PN-3 | Transport | Tier 2 | Storm surge | n/a |
SS-12 dependencies
- Upstream
- Transmission L4, L7
- Downstream
- WTW-2, H-Campus, DX-1
- Restoration target
- 16 h
- Owner
- Asset owner
Dependency graph
red: SS-12 and its dependants
Restoration time by sector
Fig.Asset criticality register: example names and illustrative values, not a record or a live system.
What the work is read against.
The platform does not set standards. It reads its evidence against the frameworks that competent bodies have adopted, so a finding can be placed where a decision-maker already works.
| Framework or standard | Body | What it sets |
|---|---|---|
| Principles for Resilient Infrastructure | UNDRR | Principles and a stress-testing approach for national infrastructure resilience |
| Critical Entities Resilience Directive | European Parliament and Council of the European Union | Obligations on member states and critical entities to assess risk and take resilience measures |
| NIS2 Directive | European Parliament and Council of the European Union | Cybersecurity risk management and incident reporting duties for essential and important entities |
| ISO 55000 series Asset management | International Organization for Standardization | Principles and requirements for managing physical assets over their life cycle |
| Sendai Framework target D | United Nations, with UNDRR as custodian | Reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services |
| NERC Reliability Standards | North American Electric Reliability Corporation | Mandatory standards for planning and operating the bulk power system in North America |
| International Ship and Port Facility Security Code | International Maritime Organization | Security requirements for ships and port facilities |
| Hospital Safety Index | WHO and PAHO | Assessment of the structural, non-structural and functional safety of health facilities |
| Global Infrastructure Resilience report | Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) | Analysis of infrastructure risk and resilience across sectors and countries |
A cascade through interdependent networks.
A hazard footprint takes out co-located assets in every layer; fragmentation, dependency between layers and overload of the survivors then spread the failure. The 3D view separates the layers by depth. Teaching model with stated illustrative values, not a prediction. The map on this page shows Western Europe; the model itself is not tied to a place.
Controls
- Assets per layer
- 18
- Hazard footprint
- 8% of area
- Assets that depend on another layer
- 60%
- Spare capacity (tolerance)
- 30%
Readouts
- Assets hit by the hazard
- 20%
- Assets still working
- 41%
- Amplification of the initial damage
- 2.9 times
- Steps to settle
- 2
Numbers, methods and sources
| Step | Transport working (%) | Power working (%) | Telecoms working (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 83 | 72 | 83 |
| 1 | 72 | 28 | 61 |
| 2 | 61 | 11 | 50 |
Methods
- Interdependent networks Buldyrev and others (2010), Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks, Nature 464
- Overload cascades Motter and Lai (2002), Physical Review E 66
- Betweenness load Brandes (2001), Journal of Mathematical Sociology 25
- Multilayer networks Kivela and others (2014), Journal of Complex Networks 2
- Infrastructure interdependencies Rinaldi, Peerenboom and Kelly (2001), IEEE Control Systems 21(6)
- Uncertainty fan (parameter Monte Carlo) Spiegelhalter, Pearson and Short (2011), Visualising uncertainty about the future, Science 333
- One-at-a-time sensitivity (tornado) Saltelli and others (2008), Global Sensitivity Analysis: The Primer, Wiley
Data
The model runs on the teaching values set by the controls. To calibrate it for a place, read it against these admitted layers and series, which this page’s map can draw:
- Major roads Natural Earth
- Railways Natural Earth
- Seaports Natural Earth
- Airports Natural Earth
- Urban extents Natural Earth
- Night lights tonight, outages (VIIRS Day/Night Band) NASA/NOAA VIIRS (Suomi NPP) · register nasa.gibs.context-live-layers
- Natural events (NASA EONET) NASA EONET · register nasa.eonet.events
Across the six pillars, led by Nexus Consortium
- Experiments Labs
- Built in Critical Infrastructure in Foundry
- Tested at Critical Infrastructure in Universe
- Codified in Energy and Critical Infrastructure in Standards
- Published in Critical Infrastructure in Reports
- Taught in Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry in Academy
The questions this field works on.
Electricity and lifelines
Dependency of services on power.
TopicWater and wastewater assets
Facilities, utility networks and service areas.
TopicTelecommunications and cables
Communications, data links and shared dependencies.
TopicTransport and logistics nodes
Ports, roads, rail and supply routes.
TopicHealthcare and emergency services
Essential facility dependencies.
TopicUrban assets and housing
Buildings, heat and climate exposures.
TopicInterdependency and cascade
Shared failure points and restoration sequence.
TopicAsset standards and safety
Operator authority and engineering assurance.
TopicTransport and mobility
Mobility networks, ports, rail and critical access.
Model Critical Infrastructure as a system. Run the cascade.
Assembled from the Nexus Standards area profile Critical infrastructure and critical entities: the hazards it names, the systems and sectors that carry the loss, the controls that dampen it and the data that observe it. Choose the components, pick an initiating hazard and step through the cascade. The Map view places the run on an example geography with open data. Every coupling weight is a stated assumption you can change. A teaching model, not a forecast, an assessment or a certification. To model a place of your own choosing, open the full System Builder.
Hazards
- Dam failure
- River flood (set off downstream)
- Flash flood (set off downstream)
- Mass displacement (set off downstream)
- Widespread power outage (set off downstream)
- Water supply shortfall (set off downstream)
Systems and couplings
- Critical infrastructure and critical entities
- Energy risk standards Dependency
- Space weather, spectrum and timing risk standards Common-mode dependency
- Compound and cascading hazard standards Cascade
- Cyber resilience and digital operational resilience Common driver
Controls
NS-0Constitution and principlesNS-3Risk record UNIs (grammar, legacy crosswalk, allocation authority)NS-9Contextual UNIs (deployments, instances, programme instances)NS-10Policies and clauses (machine-readable obligations: definition, binding, evaluation and enforcement)NS-11Verification and monitoring (evidence, attestations, zero-trust conformance observation)NRS-H61Hazard family: Cascading failure (NHS-1 sys.cascade)NRS-H94Hazard family: Systemic cyber events (NHS-1 cyber.systemic-cyber)NRS-H107Hazard family: Digital infrastructure concentration and monoculture (NHS-1 tech.digital-concentration)NRS-K31Domain pack profile: Cyber national resilience (DOMAIN-031)NRS-K36Domain pack profile: Critical infrastructure (DOMAIN-036)NRS-K48Domain pack profile: Financial system resilience (DOMAIN-048)
Observation
- OpenStreetMap planet and replication (listed for reference)
- Global Power Plant Database (listed for reference)
- NASA Black Marble night-time lights (VNP46) (listed for reference)
- Global Human Settlement Layer (listed for reference)
- Damage to critical infrastructure attributed to disasters
- Number of disruptions to basic services attributed to disasters
- Proportion of the rural population who live within 2 km of an all-season road
Example geography
- Europe: 113 hexagonal cells
- Night lights tonight, outages (VIIRS Day/Night Band), NASA GIBS
- Surface water through cloud, 30 m (OPERA DSWx-S1 radar), NASA GIBS
- Rain rate, last half hour (IMERG), NASA GIBS
- Surface soil moisture (SMAP), NASA GIBS
What Critical Infrastructure does.
Critical infrastructure resilience is the ability of lifeline systems such as power, water, telecommunications, transport and health services to keep delivering essential services through shocks and to recover quickly. It depends on design standards, redundancy, maintenance and the dependencies between systems. GCRI prepares evidence; operators, regulators and governments decide.
Its community
Infrastructure operators; engineers; utilities; asset managers; public planners.
Its methods
Network flow; asset dependencies; service restoration modelling.
Its outputs
Lifeline dependency map methods; critical-services continuity notes.
Coupled risk, applied response.
The sectors urban flood touches and how strongly they depend on each other: what a study has to observe and model together.
Choose a context
Sectors · Urban floodStress
Pillars · Urban floodKPI
In this contextDependence or handoff, heavier is strongerOutside this context
Programme yearAll phases
Context
Urban flood
Flooded streets take out substations, pumping stations and clinic access together; drinking water fails when power does.
W · E · I · F · H · B
Risk
- Sectors
- 4 of 6
- Relations
- 6 of 15
- Coupling
- 0.46 share of total
Hover a corner, a line or a row to trace it across both sides.
Route
Applied to urban flood
L · F · U · S · R · A
Response
- Pillars
- 5 of 6
- Handoffs
- 11 of 18
- Loops
- 8 closed
Expected value
- What is at stake
- $390Ba year at least, in infrastructure disruption costs to households and firms in low- and middle-income countriesWorld Bank, Lifelines, 2019
- Return on resilience
- 4 : 1benefit to costWorld Bank, Lifelines, 2019
- Avoided loss
- 30%less damage with 24 hours’ warning of a storm or heatwaveGlobal Commission on Adaptation, Adapt Now, 2019
Hover a pillar, a line or a row to read how it is applied.
A: a teaching cascade (shock 0.6, gain 0.35, four rounds) over teaching values for a typical city-region, not measurements. B: illustrative applications and the KPI each pillar answers for; values are published benchmarks, cited, not forecasts. Open events: NASA EONET, live.
What Critical Infrastructure studies, and what stays with operators and regulators.
Critical Infrastructure, studies lifeline systems, how they fail and how failures cascade between them, and develops dependency and restoration methods with operators under agreed terms. It inspects nothing, regulates nothing, designates no critical entity and operates no asset.
Network diagrams and outage scenarios shown here are synthetic or illustrative. Restricted topology never appears in public outputs.
How Critical Infrastructure is modelled, measured and tested.
The model, its assumptions, its data and its uncertainty, in the form a scientist or engineer would check. Structures follow published methods. The values drawn are illustrative, not findings.
System model
The couplings between the systems in Critical Infrastructure: signs of influence, a reinforcing and a balancing loop, and cross-links where stress jumps.
Model, equations and assumptions
The model structure used for Critical Infrastructure, the assumptions it makes and how each is tested.
Ri = f(Hi, Ei, Vi, Ci)hazard, exposure, vulnerability and coping capacityEAL = ∑k pk · Lkover events k with annual probability pkxt+1 = A xt + B ut + εtA carries the couplings, u the shock, ε the error| Assumption | Why it is made | How it is tested |
|---|---|---|
| Hazard and exposure are independent within an event | Keeps the loss integral tractable | Compare with a copula fit on joint records |
| Couplings are linear near the operating point | Lets shocks propagate through A | Perturb beyond the linear range and compare |
| Vulnerability curves transfer between places | Local curves are rarely available | Validate against observed losses where they exist |
- Inputs
- versioned datasets with provenance
- Outputs
- distributions, never single numbers
- Code
- released with the model card and tests
- Reproduction
- same data, code, environment and seed
Lifelines carry the five domains.
- WaterHow this field couples to itWater and wastewater networks are lifelines in their own right and major electricity users.
- EnergyHow this field couples to itThe grid sits underneath every other lifeline.
- FoodHow this field couples to itPorts, roads and cold storage move food; their failure shows first in prices.
- HealthHow this field couples to itHospitals depend on power, water, telecoms and transport at once.
- BiodiversityHow this field couples to itInfrastructure corridors fragment habitats; nature-based measures can protect assets.
Infrastructure exposure in Western Europe.
Night lights, population density and flood water over Western Europe, from NASA GIBS. Each layer carries its own date.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
Infrastructure exposure, for this page
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed
- Source
- VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2) (NASA LAADS DAAC)
- Provider
- NASA LAADS DAAC
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite radiance, corrected for moonlight and atmosphere
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-12
- Resolution
- about 500 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite night-time radiance for the date shown; lights are a proxy for electricity use and outages, not a measurement of supply or access.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Estimated
- Source
- Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (NASA SEDAC (CIESIN, Columbia University))
- Provider
- NASA SEDAC (CIESIN, Columbia University)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Vintage
- null; Census-based estimate, static (2020)
- Resolution
- about 1 km grid
- Uncertainty
- Census-based estimate of people per square kilometre in 2020, shown as exposure context; not a count of people affected by any hazard.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed (clouds leave gaps)
- Source
- VIIRS Global Flood Product (NASA LANCE)
- Provider
- NASA LANCE
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite detection; clouds leave gaps
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-14
- Resolution
- about 250 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite detection; clouds leave gaps. Satellite or model raster as the provider publishes it. Clouds, swath gaps and retrieval error leave gaps and noise; values are indicators, not measurements at a place.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed
- Source
- VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance (NASA LANCE)
- Provider
- NASA LANCE
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite image
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-14
- Resolution
- about 250 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite image. Satellite or model raster as the provider publishes it. Clouds, swath gaps and retrieval error leave gaps and noise; values are indicators, not measurements at a place.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Modelled (latest year GIBS publishes)
- Source
- MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1) (NASA LP DAAC)
- Provider
- NASA LP DAAC
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- yearly; Satellite classification; latest year GIBS publishes
- Newest at build
- 2024-01-01
- Resolution
- about 500 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite land cover classes for the year shown, including croplands; a classification with known errors, not a farm register.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
About this layer
- Evidence
- Observed (clouds leave gaps)
- Source
- MODIS Terra EVI (NASA LANCE)
- Provider
- NASA LANCE
- Licence
- NASA open data
- Vintage
- daily; Satellite index; clouds leave gaps
- Newest at build
- 2026-10-13
- Resolution
- about 250 m grid
- Uncertainty
- Satellite vegetation index for the 8 days to the date shown, a habitat condition indicator; not a measure of species or biodiversity.
- Reached through
- gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov, only after you allow the live map
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
Infrastructure exposure, framed on Western Europe.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.
Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONET · U.S. Geological Survey · NASA JPL OPERA DIST-ALERTSources and licences
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- VIIRS Black Marble night-time lights, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; distributed by the NASA Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University. 2018. Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Revision 11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). doi:10.7927/H49C6VHW. CC BY 4.0
- VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- MODIS land products (vegetation indices, gross primary production, land cover), NASA LP DAAC and LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
- Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
- © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). ODbL
- Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into hexagonal cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
- Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
- Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
- Live: NASA EONET Events are indicative, not authority warnings.
- Live: U.S. Geological Survey Events are indicative, not authority warnings.
- Observed (EO): NASA JPL OPERA DIST-ALERT (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026). We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
- River discharge forecast, 30 days with range (GloFAS via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Emergency Management Service information 2026; not a flood warning.
- Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Optional layers (12 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.
Layers and dates
- Night-time lights, daily: VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2), NASA LAADS DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
- Population density, 2020: Population: CIESIN, Columbia University, Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (2018), NASA SEDAC, CC BY 4.0 · static
- Flood water, 3-day composite: VIIRS Global Flood Product, NASA LANCE · 14 Oct 2026
- True colour: VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
- Land cover type (IGBP), yearly: MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1), NASA LP DAAC · 2024
- Enhanced vegetation index, rolling 8 days: MODIS Terra EVI, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
Where infrastructure evidence goes.
Dependency studies are designed for the Strategic Systems series. Asset records would follow ISO 55000 practice and carry identifiers under the proposed Nexus Standards.
- Operators can share restoration timelines from past events.
- Engineers can contribute fragility data for local asset types.
- Researchers can submit interdependency models for review.
Lifelines fail together.
Modern societies run on a small number of networks that depend on one another. Water treatment and pumping need electricity. Electricity grids need telecommunications for control and fuel deliveries for backup generation. Telecommunications need power, cooling and physical access for repair crews. Hospitals need all of them at once. Engineers call these lifelines because their loss quickly becomes a threat to health, safety and economic life.
Each network is usually designed to be reliable on its own terms, with redundancy against the failures its operators expect. The danger lies in the links between them. A storm, earthquake, heatwave, cyber intrusion or equipment fault in one system can propagate to others through physical, cyber, geographic and logical dependencies. Outages that begin in one sector are then prolonged by another: repair crews cannot travel because traffic signals are dark, or a substation cannot be restarted because its communications link has lost backup power.
These cascades are hard to foresee because no single operator sees the whole system. Dependencies often sit in contracts, shared corridors and assumptions about backup durations rather than in any map. Ageing assets, rising climate hazards, increasing digitalisation and concentrated supply chains are each changing the shape of that hidden network.
Science for continuity of essential services.
Critical Infrastructure is designed for infrastructure operators, engineers, utilities, asset managers and public planners who need shared methods for understanding dependencies and restoration.
Lifeline dependency methods
Methods for mapping which services depend on which assets, and how far backup arrangements reach.
Service restoration modelling
Network-flow and optimisation methods for the order in which interdependent services can be brought back.
Critical-services continuity notes
Evidence notes on how essential facilities keep operating when lifelines fail, with their limits stated.
GCRI does not regulate, certify, license or approve infrastructure. Operators and competent authorities keep every decision about their assets.
Grounded in engineering, read across three institutions.
The platform stewards three methods in the STEM Commons: reliability and resilience engineering, sensors, IoT and observation networks and communications and network technology. It also applies systems engineering, network science and contagion, optimisation and operations research, power systems engineering, energy generation, storage and grid technology, structural and earthquake engineering, urban and transport engineering, process and industrial safety engineering and space systems and satellite services. Each is described with its assumptions on the STEM foundation of Critical Infrastructure.
Inside Foundry it works with the NXS-NET (network topology and continuity), NXS-OPS (instruments, sensors and calibration), NXS-SIG (signal, spectrum, timing and PNT), NXS-DSS (decision cases and deliberation) and NXS-NST (civilian common operating picture) systems, and its findings are designed for the Strategic Systems and Scenario and Stress-Test report series. Lifeline cascade and restoration is its planned theme in the annual Universe programme.
Its counterparts look at the same systems through other mandates: Disaster and Crisis Governance at The Global Risks Forum (GRF) convenes the institutions that govern crisis response, Development Finance Nexus at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA) builds shared industry understanding of infrastructure investment risk, and Financial Cyber and Operational Resilience at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA) does the same for operational resilience in finance. All are listed on counterparts across the Consortium.
The areas of critical infrastructure this platform takes on.
Critical Infrastructure studies the lifeline systems that communities and economies depend on: electricity, water and wastewater, telecommunications, transport, health and emergency services, and the buildings people live in. Its pages set out how these systems fail, how failures cascade between them, and the engineering, standards and data used to keep services running and restore them. Every value is labelled by its evidence and every limit stated. It prepares evidence; operators, regulators and governments decide.
Electricity and lifelines
Generation, transmission and distribution, and the other lifelines that stop when power stops.
Water and wastewater assets
Treatment plants, pumping, pipes and sewers, and the energy, chemicals and staff they need.
Telecommunications and cables
Mobile and fixed networks, data centres, submarine cables and the power and routes they rely on.
Transport and logistics nodes
Ports, airports, rail yards, pipelines and warehouses where flows of goods concentrate.
Healthcare and emergency services
Hospitals, emergency dispatch, fire and rescue, and their dependence on other lifelines.
Urban assets and housing
Buildings, bridges and public facilities, and the condition and safety of the housing stock.
Interdependency and cascade
How failure in one infrastructure travels into others, and how restoration has to follow the dependencies.
Transport and mobility
Roads, rail and public transport networks that move people to work, care and safety.
Built on named science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Every claim on Critical Infrastructure rests on methods with a canonical page in the STEM Commons, so readers can see what a finding depends on and where its limits lie.
How work moves in this field.
A question becomes evidence, a governed build, an organised community, a controlled test, a reviewed publication and, finally, a decision taken by the competent authority under its own rules.
- Question Universe National, regional or institutional priority. Question in Critical Infrastructure
- Evidence Foundry STEM foundation of the platform. Evidence in Critical Infrastructure
- Build Foundry Foundry. Build in Critical Infrastructure
- Organise Universe Nexus ecosystem. Organise in Critical Infrastructure
- Test Universe Universe (independent site). Test in Critical Infrastructure
- Publish Reports Reports. Publish in Critical Infrastructure
- Decide Competent authority Competent authorities and institutions, through NXS-RLS (participants, agreements and handoffs). Decide in Critical Infrastructure
- Renew Universe Corrections and the next annual agenda. Renew in Critical Infrastructure
Each step of the cycle in the pillar it runs in; the decision stays with the competent authority, outside the programme.
- Labs
- Foundry
- Universe
- Nexus Standards
- Reports
- Risk Academy
- Competent authority (outside the programme)
How this works across the six pillars.
Critical Infrastructure works through six pillars of one annual programme, led by the Nexus Consortium, with GCRI, GRF and GRA each contributing in its role: explore, experiment and prototype in Labs, build, simulate and prepare in Foundry, convene and test in Universe, codify, correct and apply in Nexus Standards, publish in every format in Reports, teach in the open in Risk Academy.
handoff in playrecorded handoffno direct handoff
Programme yearAll phases
Route
The whole programme
Every pillar hands its work to another; together they close the year’s feedback loops.
L · F · U · S · R · A
- Pillars
- 6 of 6
- Handoffs
- 18 of 18
- Loops
- 17 closed
Handoffs in play
- F01Universe → Foundry · Admitted mission becomes a cycle project with a decision caseReadiness preparation
- F02Foundry → Universe · Core Build Report and go or no-go evidenceControlled build
- F03Foundry → Reports · Sealed observations and indicator series behind a profileCloseout
- F04Universe → Reports · After-action and scenario findings for chapters 10 and 13After-action review
and 14 more
- LabsWhere questions become experiments and prototypes: new methods, data and tools are tried in the open, with their limits on record, before the Foundry builds them, under the Nexus Consortium.Labs
- FoundryWhere methods, data and models become reproducible builds, each run with its inputs, version and limits on record.Critical Infrastructure in FoundryFoundry
- UniverseWhere a build is tested under controlled conditions with independent evaluators, so a method’s skill is measured, not assumed.Critical Infrastructure in Universeuniverse.nexus
- Nexus StandardsWhere methods, identifiers and data schemas are codified in the open and corrected when a test finds a fault.Energy and Critical Infrastructure in Standardsnexustandards.com
- ReportsWhere findings are published with their method, uncertainty and evidence class, and corrected as new versions.Critical Infrastructure in ReportsReports
- Risk AcademyWhere methods and systems are taught on real data and real places, by working the case, on Risk Academy.Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry in Academyrisksacademy.com
The same field, seen three ways.
GCRI studies a field as science, GRF governs it and GRA builds shared financial understanding of it. Critical Infrastructure links to its counterparts so that work on one side is visible on the others.
Where this page’s references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
- UNDRR Principles for Resilient Infrastructure (UNDRR, 2022)
- Directive (EU) 2022/2557 on the resilience of critical entities
- ISO 55000:2024 Asset management, vocabulary, overview and principles (ISO)
- International Ship and Port Facility Security Code (IMO)
- Nexus Standards, the proposed NS series (nexustandards.com)
Pages in Critical Infrastructure.
Mandate and publisher
PageField overview
PageResearch and evidence
PageInnovation and practical technology
PageProgrammes and projects
PageData and technical methods
PageSpecialist community
PageLearning and professional development
PageEvents and technical dialogues
PageResearch and publications
PageParticipation paths
PageContact the specialist team
PageTrust, rights and status
PageSTEM foundation of Critical Infrastructure
PageChapters
PageHow work moves in this field
PageBuild in Foundry
PageTest in Universe
PagePublish in Reports
PageThe same field across the Consortium
PageTopics
Where this page leads across the Consortium.
Questions and answers.
Who publishes Critical Infrastructure?
Is Critical Infrastructure active?
How can I contribute?
Where are findings published?
Which values on this platform are real?
How do I report an error?
Does the platform assess specific facilities?
Will dependency maps reveal sensitive locations?
Contribute evidence from this page.
Reports is the Consortium’s quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.
- EmailGateway GW-GCRISend it from this pageEvidence, a correction, a case, a method, a review, a translation or profile input. It arrives tagged with this page, so the editor who owns it receives it.
- ZenodoOpen depositDeposit it and submit to the communityPublish your own record on Zenodo with your ORCID iD, then submit it to the Reports community there. Curators review it; the DOI stays yours.
- ReportsGCRISee every way to contributeThe contribution types, how each is reviewed, what credit you receive, the licence and what is never accepted.
Never send personal data, sensitive infrastructure detail or anything you have no right to share. A contribution is reviewed before use; sending it confers no authorship or editorial rights, and sponsorship never buys a finding.
How Critical Infrastructure works.
Choose a view and press Play to follow the platform’s process, its programme year, the standards it applies and how its findings are published. The outline shows how the work is designed to run, not the status of any decision.
How Critical Infrastructure works
Platforms · Programme year · Standards · Reports
A platform joins a field to named methods, labelled evidence and the outputs it publishes, without becoming the authority it serves.
01 Scope
- 01Field and familiesStart · The platform leadThe home states the field, its families and who it serves.
- 02Topic dossiersRecord · Platform authorsTopics explain the subject with labelled evidence.
02 Evidence
- 03Evidence labelsRecord · GCRIEach value is labelled: observed, published statistics, estimated, modelled, scenario or unknown.
- 04MethodsStep · Method ownersMethods come from the STEM Commons, each with one canonical page.
03 Work
- 05Scenarios on the systemsModel · Foundry pillarScenarios run on the Nexus systems, labelled as scenario.
- 06Standards that applyRecord · Nexus StandardsThe platform names the standards that apply. A validator report is evidence for review.
04 Publish
- 07EditionsRecord · ReportsFindings are published through Reports with their limits.
- 08Authority decidesOutcome · The competent authorityDecisions and execution stay with the government, operator or licensed institution.
Critical Infrastructure home · Platforms · Shared methodsAn outline of how the work is designed to run; it does not report the status of any decision or record.
Take part in Critical Infrastructure.
Start from who you are. Answer an open call. Or form and lead a competence cell on the Critical Infrastructure platform.
National institutions
Ministries, statistics offices and agencies: a national desk and chapter, and a seat in the working groups. National chapters
Sectors and professions
Operators, regulators, banks, insurers and professional bodies whose work touches Critical Infrastructure. Participate
Learning
Courses and practice, with a record of every course completed. Free to study. Open learning
Standards
Draft, review and adopt the methods and data standards with the working groups. Working groups
Communities and research
Universities, civil society and individual experts: projects, data and review. Write to the team
| Open call | Seeks | Closes |
|---|---|---|
| Founding call for experts to the working groups CALL-FOUNDING-EXPERTS | expert, editor, chair | 2026-12-15 |
| Open nomination for the three independent expert seats of the Global Standards Council CALL-GSC-IND | council-member | 2026-12-01 |
| Nominations of interim regional members (applies only if the transitional provision is decided) CALL-GSC-REG | council-member | 2026-12-15 |
| Review of the wave-1 risk core outlines (C1, C2, C3, C4, C8, C10, C11) CALL-REVIEW-WAVE1 | contributor | 2027-01-31 |
| Experts for the core standards of risk science: uncertainty and evidence grading, scales, structured expert judgement, tolerability, extremes and compound events, catastrophic and existential risk, ethics and equity, units and measurement (NRS-C17 to NRS-C24) CALL-CORE-SCIENCE | expert, editor, chair | 2027-01-31 |
| Independent reviewers for the families of the hazard atlas, three from at least two regions for each family (NHS2-R19), priority families first CALL-ATLAS-REVIEW | expert | 2027-03-31 |
| Members of the interim Frontier Safety Review Panel and red-team reviewers (biosafety and biosecurity, AI safety and security, critical-infrastructure security); applications treated in confidence CALL-FRONTIER-SAFETY-REVIEW | expert | 2026-11-30 |
| Experts in ontology, metrology, software verification and conformity assessment for the requirement register, the NHS-2 machine representation, the conformance test suites and the conformity assessment scheme CALL-CONFORMANCE-ONTOLOGY | expert, editor | 2027-01-31 |
Calls past their closing date are hidden automatically. Every call, proposal and route: open areas and calls.
Gather the cell
Bring together three to seven people with complementary skills: data, field practice, policy and communication.
Register it
Write to the team with the cell’s name, members, area and region. You receive a reference and a contact. Write to the team
Choose a charter
Pick one focus: research and evidence, data and maps, standards review, or community preparedness.
Learn together
Follow shared study paths at Risk Academy, with practice and a record of every course completed. Hazards and resilience
Lead and report
Hold regular sessions. Publish what the cell learns through Reports. Bring findings to the working groups. Working groups
What a national team or a local community can do on The Global Risks Index (NXS-GRX) today.
Your country’s profile
Open risk profiles for 195 countries, with sources and licences on every value. Open the Index
Correct or reply
Correct a value or reply for your country. The change is logged with its effect. Open the Index
Offer data
Offer a dataset. It enters through the licence gate, with your credit. Open the Index
Every figure on this page is indexed: infrastructure, energy, cyber, Western Europe.
The Index is the Consortium’s indexing system for risk data. Every indicator, hazard, series and country profile carries its Nexus Standards identifier, its source and its licence, so what this page shows can be traced, corrected and reused.
- 01 · Sources205 registered sourcesEvery value keeps its source and licence; withheld values are counted.Data and licences
- 02 · Nexus StandardsNIS-1 and NHS-1451 indicators, 905 hazards; every record carries a UNI.Nexus Standards
- 03 · The Index54 series, 195 country profilesComputed on the standards; no value is published until an edition is released.The Global Risks Index
- 04 · This pageCritical InfrastructureMaps, figures and feeds read the Index in the context of infrastructure, energy, cyber and Western Europe.Public API
Series in this context infrastructure, energy, cyber
- GSGlobal InfrastructureInfrastructure fragility, service continuity, interdependency of power, water, transport and telecommunications, and investment exposure.NXS-GRX-AR-000067Infrastructure · Energy · Cyber
- GLBGlobal SystemsThe state of interdependent global risk: the twenty domain indices aggregated to the world, the five core systems (water, energy, food, health, biodiversity) and their couplings, the global tail register and the gap…NXS-GRX-AR-000002Hazards · Energy · Infrastructure
- GSGlobal EnergySupply adequacy, import dependency, grid reliability, affordability, extreme-weather exposure, critical minerals and transition pathways.NXS-GRX-AR-000060Energy · Infrastructure · Cyber
- XTCyber and cyber-physical systemsThreats to operational technology, industrial control and cyber-physical systems across energy, water, health, ports and logistics.NXS-GRX-AR-000089Cyber · Infrastructure · Energy
Country profiles Western Europe
Every country profile carries the source and licence of each value. Correct a value or reply
Hazard domains NHS-1
- Built systemsNXS-GRX-AR-000144
- Frontier and exponential technologyNXS-GRX-AR-000146
Geodata and API open
Open layers on an equal-area hexagon grid, shown as densities per km² or as symbols: People · GHSL 2025People · WorldPop 2025Built-up areaPortsAirportsRoadsRailwaysRivers and lake centrelines
/api/v1/public/grix · https://nexustandards.com/uni/{uni}
Developers · Data · Made with Natural Earth, Public domain; GHSL and WorldPop, CC BY 4.0
Snapshot of the Index registries pinned 2026-10-23 · 22c6eed. Research and risk-analytics information: not a rating, an official classification, a warning, a benchmark or advice.
Bring a method, a dataset or a question.
Information and enquiries are open today. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.
Legal documents.
Maps, data and figures on this site are shown for context and general information. They are not advice, forecasts or warnings; the limits of the information are set out in the Disclaimers and Data Notices.