The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Digital public infrastructure depends on electricity, telecommunications, cloud computing, cryptography, skilled staff and public trust, and a growing range of services depend on it in turn. This page maps those links, shows how failures in DPI travel into social and economic harm and names the platforms across the Consortium that study, govern or finance the connected systems.
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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, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on India; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer 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 dependencies and consequences, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on India; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
Dependencies and consequences in Digital Public Infrastructure describe how digital public infrastructure as well as cyber and digital resilience connect to other systems through physical, economic, social and ecological links, and how stress travels along them toward fields such as those of AI and Digital Governance and Fintech 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.
Data centres, networks and devices need power and telecommunications. Rural and low-income areas often have the least reliable access.
Hosting platforms, software suppliers and cryptographic keys. Compromise or loss of any of them can stop services. See Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience.
Skilled public servants, clear legal mandates and public confidence. Systems fail when people distrust or cannot use them.
Social protection increasingly relies on digital identity to verify eligibility and on digital payments to deliver transfers. An authentication failure or payment outage can delay benefits for people with no savings to fall back on. Health systems use identity and data exchange for records, prescriptions and insurance claims. Tax, licensing, land registration and voting registers may all draw on the same identity foundation.
Private services build on DPI too. Banks use digital identity for account opening; merchants rely on interoperable payments; lenders use consented data sharing. Failures therefore reach markets and livelihoods as well as public services. The financial transmission of payment failures is studied at Payments and Market Infrastructure and Financial Cyber and Operational Resilience at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA).
An authentication service fails, blocking access to benefits, health records and bank accounts at the same time.
People without documents or with biometric difficulties cannot enrol, and lose access as paper alternatives are withdrawn.
A breach of a central register exposes many people to fraud and erodes trust in every service that uses it.
A proprietary platform raises prices or fails, and the state cannot migrate quickly because interfaces and data formats are closed.
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 data engineering, interoperability and stewardship and cybersecurity and cryptography, with stated assumptions. Decisions on DPI belong to governments and competent authorities; governance dialogue is convened at AI and Digital Governance at The Global Risks Forum (GRF).
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.