Systems of Systems

Chapter 8

Critical Infrastructure Protection ¹

 

8.1. General context of critical infrastructure protection

8.1.1.Challenges

One of the main characteristics of our modern societies is their megalopolises, whose numerous infrastructures are often the hubs of the economic and social activity of the region, sometimes of the country. A non-exhaustive list of key infrastructures of the economic activity would feature: airports, train stations, subway stations, the main commercial harbors, regional centers of food supplies (for example Rungis in the Parisian suburbs).

All these infrastructures feature the following characteristics:

– they are thoroughfares through which thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, people and/or goods transit every day;

– they are open and interlinked within generally dense agglomerations;

– closing them for several days on end would have severe consequences on the human, social and economical activity of the region, sometimes of the country;

– any incident or deliberate attack leading to a severe malfunctioning of the infrastructures would instantly attract the attention of the media, or even of the politics.

Similar issues are raised by large events which bring together a high number of players or spectators: political meetings, sports games such as soccer, rugby or car races, etc.

For most of these events, security demands that the problem be studied in its entirety, the whole infrastructure taken into account, in its physical definition (the buildings ...