Critical infrastructures: challenges for systems engineering

Infrastructure systems or infrasystems perform critical functions to society such as energy and water provision, transport, and communications. Despite increasing awareness of societal vulnerability to infrasystem failures, relatively little research has been done so far into the impacts of the numerous changes taking place in the system´s hard and soft architectures on infrasystem reliability. This paper presents a simple conceptual infrasystem layer model useful to structure this kind of research and compare sectors, and outlines a number of key findings and associated challenges for infrasystem research and design. These include the development of a culture and capacity for learning about system behavior as a whole, a number of recommendations for actions by public government, and the development of research methods, models and design principles that take the inherent socio-technical character of the infrasystems into account.