Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

SYSTEM AND SECTOR INTERDEPENDENCIES: AN OVERVIEW

JAMES P. PEERENBOOM AND RONALD E. FISHER

Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois

1 INTRODUCTION

The importance of infrastructure interdependencies was first highlighted at the national level in 1997 when the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) released its landmark report, Critical Foundations: Protecting America’s Infrastructures [1]. The report pointed out that the security, economic prosperity, and social well-being of the nation depend on the reliable functioning of our increasingly complex and interdependent infrastructures.

In defining its case for action, the Commission noted that interdependency between and among our infrastructures increases the possibility that a rather minor and routine disturbance could cascade into regional or national problems. The Commission further concluded that technical complexity could also permit interdependencies and associated vulnerabilities to go unrecognized until a major failure occurs. The blackout on August 14, 2003, in which large portions of the Midwest and Northeast United States and Ontario, Canada, experienced an electric power outage, dramatically illustrated the enormously complex technical challenge that we face in preventing cascading impacts [2].

In the nearly 10 years since the release of the Critical Foundations report, much has been written about identifying, understanding, and analyzing infrastructure interdependencies, and significant ...