The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Critical infrastructure science studies the physical and digital systems whose continuous operation society takes for granted: power, water, communications, transport, health facilities and buildings. It asks how reliable these systems are, how they behave under stress and how quickly they recover. At The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI), the field is approached as a system of systems, because the most damaging failures are those that cross from one network into another.
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Infrastructure exposure, for this page
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For field overview, 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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GeographyFor field overview, 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.
The Critical Infrastructure field covers reliability and resilience of lifeline infrastructure and the services on which communities and economies rely. Experts in it study questions such as electricity and lifelines and water and wastewater assets, with methods such as reliability and resilience engineering as well as systems engineering. Its counterparts at GRF and GRA look at the same systems through governance and finance.
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.
Infrastructure failures are measured less by damage to equipment than by loss of service to people: hours without water, clinics without power, supply chains without ports. Because services depend on each other, the consequences of a single failure can be far larger than the asset that failed. The field therefore distinguishes reliability, the ability to keep working under expected conditions, from resilience, the ability to absorb, adapt to and recover from shocks beyond design assumptions.
Pressures on the field are growing. Many networks were built for climate conditions that no longer hold, digital control has created new pathways for cyber disruption, and the concentration of functions in fewer, larger facilities can create single points of failure. Funding for maintenance and renewal often competes with more visible priorities, so deferred maintenance quietly erodes margins that only become visible in a crisis.
How often components fail and how redundancy limits the effect, studied through reliability and resilience engineering.
Which services rely on which assets, and through which physical, cyber, geographic and logical links. See interdependency and cascade.
How earthquakes, floods, heat and storms load structures and networks, studied through structural and earthquake engineering.
In what order interdependent services can be restored with limited crews and parts, using optimization and operations research.
How standards and safety cases establish confidence in assets. See asset standards and safety.
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. |
| Asset management | The coordinated activity of an organization to realise value from its assets over their life cycle. |
| Restoration | Returning infrastructure service to normal after disruption, sequenced by priority and dependency. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from the interactions and dependencies within and between systems, where a shock can propagate and threaten the functioning of the whole. |
Critical infrastructure links directly to the resource systems studied at Energy Nexus, Water Nexus and Health Nexus, to urban form at Cities and Built Environment and to digital risk at Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience. Its links are traced on dependencies and consequences. Across the Consortium, Disaster and Crisis Governance at The Global Risks Forum (GRF) convenes crisis governance and Development Finance Nexus at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA) builds shared industry understanding of infrastructure finance.
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