Title: Empirical findings on European critical infrastructure dependencies

Authors: H.A.M. Luiijf, Albert H. Nieuwenhuijs, Marieke H.A. Klaver, Michel J.G. Van Eeten, Edite Cruz

Addresses: TNO Defence, Security and Safety, P.O. Box 96864, 2509 JG The Hague, The Netherlands. ' TNO Defence, Security and Safety, P.O. Box 96864, 2509 JG The Hague, The Netherlands. ' TNO Defence, Security and Safety, P.O. Box 96864, 2509 JG The Hague, The Netherlands. ' Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. ' Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract: One type of threat consistently identified as a key challenge for critical infrastructure protection (CIP) is that of dependencies and interdependencies among different critical infrastructures (CI). This article draws on a hitherto untapped data source on infrastructure dependencies: a daily maintained database containing over 4500 serious disruption events in different CI all over the world as reported by news media. This article based upon the empirical data set until June 2009 analyses this data to discover patterns in CI failures in Europe like cascading, dependencies, and interdependencies. Some analysis results indicate that fewer sectors than many dependency models suggest drive cascading outages and that interdependencies are hardly reported.

Keywords: infrastructure dependencies; interdependency; cascading outages; serious disruption; Europe; critical infrastructures; infrastructure protection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2010.035378

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2010 Vol.2 No.1, pp.3 - 18

Published online: 27 Sep 2010 *

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