6. Infrastructure Resilience: A Framework for Assessment, Management and Governance

An infrastructure resilience framework is introduced presenting processes, tools and outcomes for system assessment, management and governance. This can be used for analysis or design of systems prior to or following actual disruptions. For this framework, infrastructure is defined as the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., building clusters and lifeline systems) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise. The framework emphasizes infrastructure systems and how they support community resilience through eight key elements. These elements provide the foundation for system assessments, management and governance of resilient infrastructure systems. Elements underpinning assessments identify the framework processes for evaluating existing or proposed systems and provide a strong basis for management and governance. The elements primarily underpinning management and governance identify the processes and tools needed to provide the outcomes to ensure resilient infrastructure systems; they also draw from and provide feedback for improving the other elements. Resilience management and governance utilizes the knowledge and results of system assessments and incorporates other tools to engineer, manage and govern resilient systems that properly support the resilience of the communities they serve.