What’s Critical about Critical Infrastructure?

Abstract

Critical infrastructure (CI) has received much attention in research, policy and political discussions in recent years, following concern over exposure of infrastructure to terrorist attack, disruption through disasters, rising awareness of the interdependent nature of infrastructure in modern urban systems, and changes in the ownership of and responsibility for infrastructure assets. In this paper, we explore the implications of different framings of both “critical” and “infrastructure”, through two questions: critical how and for whom; critical when and at what scale? Framings of CI, and their increasingly important manifestations in policy and law, have deep but too-often unexposed implications: the lines drawn between what is defined as critical and that which is not concerns not only the physical or informational assets, but the inclusion/exclusion of communities and their places and values as important aspects of modern urban governance. We argue that a better understanding of what is critical about urban infrastructure is not just recognition of their vulnerability and interconnectedness, but also of the key linkages between critical infrastructure and human and environmental system integrity and equity within the context of capitalist urbanisation.

近年来，由于基础设施遭受恐怖袭击，在自然灾害中遭到破坏，也由于人们日益意识到现代城市系统中基础设施的共生性，以及基础设施财产归属和责任的变更，研究领域、政策领域和政治领域越来越关注关键基础设施。本文提出两个问题，借此讨论“关键”和“基础设施”的外延：何以关键以及对谁关键；何时关键以及在何种程度上关键？关键基础设施的外延及其在政策和法律中日益重要的体现具有深刻的意义，然而这些意义尚未得到充分的认识。何为关键不仅关系到实体财产或信息财产，而且关乎社区的容纳/排斥度、其位置和价值，这些都是现代城市治理的重要维度。文章指出，进一步认识城市基础设施的关键性，不仅是认识到这些基础设施的薄弱性和共联性，而且需要看到在资本城市化的语境下，关键基础设施与人类以及与环境系统连贯性和平等性的关联

Keywords:

• Critical infrastructure
• cities
• Information of Things (IoT)
• security
• disasters

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two peer reviewers for their constructive comments. This research forms part of ARC research (DE120102428) by Steele, and is informed by the Hussey and Dovers (2015) research funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre.