The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Lifelines are coupled to each other and to wider economic, social and ecological systems. This page, part of Critical Infrastructure at The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI), sets out the kinds of dependency that link infrastructure systems, how stress travels along them and why consequences often appear far from the original failure. It explains the framework the platform uses to describe dependencies, and the limits of any dependency map.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For dependencies and consequences, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, true-colour imagery and population density with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Western Europe; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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Dependencies and consequences in Critical Infrastructure describe how critical infrastructure as well as cities and built environment connect to other systems through physical, economic, social and ecological links, and how stress travels along them toward fields such as those of Disaster and Crisis Governance and Development Finance Nexus. Every dependency map states its assumptions, data and uncertainty; it describes connections, not a forecast.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
One system's output is another's input: electricity to pumps, fuel to generators, water to cooling systems.
Control, metering and coordination depend on communications and shared software.
Assets in the same corridor, floodplain or building fail together under one hazard.
Contracts, regulations and market rules couple systems without any physical link.
This four-part distinction is widely used in infrastructure research. Real dependencies often combine several kinds at once.
Cascades follow recognizable patterns. A common-cause failure strikes several systems at once, as when a flood inundates co-located substations and telecommunications exchanges. An escalating failure worsens a disruption in another system, as when a power loss outlasts the fuel supply of backup generators. A cascading failure passes directly from one system to the next. Restoration can also be blocked by dependencies, because repair needs power, communications and transport that are themselves disrupted.
The consequences extend beyond infrastructure. Loss of service halts production and trade, stretches public budgets and insurance, interrupts health care and education, and falls hardest on people with the least capacity to cope. Ecological effects follow when wastewater treatment or industrial safety systems fail. These pathways are examined in interdependency and cascade.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Interdependency | A two-way dependency between infrastructures, such as power needing telecoms for control while telecoms need power to run. |
| Cascading risk | Risk that a failure in one system or component triggers failures in others that depend on it. |
| Compound event | Two or more hazards or drivers occurring together or in sequence whose joint impact exceeds what either would cause alone, such as drought followed by intense rain; IPCC assessments use the term. |
| Dependency mapping | Tracing the people, processes, technology, facilities and suppliers a service relies on. |
Dependency analysis uses network science and contagion, systems engineering and optimization and operations research, from input-output and network-flow models to agent-based simulation. Every map states its data, assumptions and uncertainty. No map is complete: many dependencies are undocumented, commercially confidential or discovered only in failure, and a dependency map describes how stress could travel, never a forecast of what will happen. Methods are set out on methods and uncertainty.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. 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.