Managing Communications in Critical Infrastructures Protection

After events of 9/11 critical infrastructure protection (CIP) gained increased attention. Although at the very beginning the problem seemed overwhelmingly demanding because these infrastructures are indeed very complex, it turned out that, step by step, a systematic approach could be taken, which would make CIP related problems manageable. However, existing reference approaches in this area (like the US national CIP initiatives) are based on assumptions about relationships between the most important critical infrastructures (i. e. water, electricity, internet), which are not reflecting the reality anymore due to technological advances. Therefore the paper provides the analysis of this new situation and gives a conceptual model that can be adapted to a particular nation-wide environment. The final goal is to develop a model of a sufficient generality, which can be incrementally refined to meet the needs of a particular environment in order to enable simulations for better decision making in CIP.