Contextualizing resilience indicators – comparable across organizations yet specific to context

Figures & data

Table 1. Overview over data collection.

Date	Purpose and activity	Participants
May–August 2016	Homework: The actor analysis – what organizations are responsible for national emergency management, operate, regulate or impact on the critical infrastructure (structured analysis common to all cases)	Researchers
September–October 2016	Homework - Baseline assessment (structured analysis common to all cases) Current status: working with resilience and assessing resilience Main threats, current challenges, needs and requirements for assessing resilience Foreseen challenges, needs and requirements for assessing resilience Review of the legal and knowledge base for assessing and improving resilience in critical infrastructures	Researchers, five interviewees from the identified organizations
Nov 2016–March 2017	Identified a number of salient threats and designed preliminary scenarios (common structure to all cases)	Researchers
March 2017–Nov 2017	Compiled a database of appropriate indicators through desktop research and interviews with expert (ad-hoc)	Researchers and seven interviewees
Dec 2017	First workshop: Structured test of the methodology – guided by common protocol and guiding questions. Discussion about resilience and its relation to similar concepts How the project and its results can be used to fulfil objectives important to the participants or the infrastructure, in addition to and integrated with existing processes and tools for risk management/business continuity. A discussion of the scenario and the DCL for resilience assessment, revising the DCL	Representatives from two drinking water producers Experts from Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, Swedish Water and Wastewater association and the Food Agency. Experts from DRICKS and from Sintef
Feb 2018	Second workshop: Revising the resilience assessment DCL and discussing implications and its potential use Discussing stress-test DCL	As above, and a fire engineer
April 2018	Third workshop: Discussing implications from stress-test and its use Using the MDCMA and discussing its use	As above and an expert from the IMPROVE project

Table 2. Baseline assessment of resilience challenges in the drinking water sector. Copyright: the authors.

Dimensions of resilience	Examples from drinking water production
System/physical: Technical aspects, physical/technical networks, interconnectedness	Larger demand on drinking water (due to urbanization and an increasing population). Quality and availability of water (affected by climate change).
Information/data: Technical systems dealing with information/data	Production facilities are becoming ‘smarter’ in terms of more advanced treatment steps and more monitoring and control. This may increase the vulnerability of the sector, since more technically advanced plants may lead to (1) a risk of lack of competence since operation will be dependent on a small number of people who know the ‘smart’ systems and (2) a risk that the engineering expertise that took us to where we are today is forgotten.
Organizational/business: Business-related, financial and HR aspects and organizational networks	Engaging early on in the municipality’s planning process to include water issues in an early stage. Emergency contingency should be strengthened.
Societal/political: The broader societal/social context, indirect stakeholders	Examine the impact of threats on different stakeholders, for example how the healthcare sector would be affected by disturbances in the distribution of drinking water.
Cognitive/decision-making: Perceptions aspects (of e.g. threats and vulnerabilities)	Risk analyses are also made related to sabotage at plants or in reservoirs. Microbial risk assessments are made in order to detect and assess risks.

Table 3. Extract from the Dynamic Checklist for assessing resilience levels for drinking water in Sweden.

Phase	Issue	Indicators
1: Understanding resilience	Event reports	How often does the management group receive event reports?
	Quality	How many samples with a remark are there/Total number of samples?
		Has there been a follow-up of samples with a remark?
		How often are chemical analyses carried out on samples from the water? (per year)
2: Preparing, anticipating	Early warning systems	How is the early warning system organized?
	Assessing Barrier status	What barriers are assessed?
3: Absorb/withstand	Coordination between actors (at various levels), external	What is the quality of coordination between external actors in the initial phase?
	Separation of wastewater and stormwater	How is the separation of the infrastructure for wastewater and stormwater designed?
4: Respond/recover	External support	Are there agreements for external supply of resources?
		Can we access personnel from others?
	Monitor effects and adapt (shift of attention)	What is the ability to monitor effects and adapt in terms of managing disturbances in the recovery phase?
5: Adapt/transform	Emergency response operation reporting including lessons learned	What is the scope of the emergency response and reporting process?
	Implementation and follow-up of lessons learned	What is the quality of the lessons learned process?

Copyright: the authors.

Figure 1. The resilience stress-test. Copyright: EU-VRi. From Øien et al. (2019).

Table 4. The Dynamic Checklist used for stress-testing the drinking water sector.

Functionality	Description of objectives	Indicators
Organizational functionality	Ability to make decisions with increased precision in time and scope	How much ability to make the right decisions when it comes to managing disruptions?
		What is the opportunity to monitor effects and adapt when it comes to handling disturbances?
		What is the possibility of stopping or reducing operations in the event of a disturbance?
		What is the value of available external decision support?
Communicative functionality	Reach out information to the right people at the right time	How quickly can the organization reach out to affected consumers?
		What ability is there to communicate status externally?
		What are the opportunities to reach the citizens and organizations involved?
Microbial functionality	Identify and evaluate hazardous raw water/production process/distribution	If barrier effect is too low has actions been planned?
		Is the raw water contaminated with microorganisms?
IT and sensor functionality	Right data for right user, possibility for analysis	Can relevant users assess the right data in due time?
		Can the data be analyzed in the appropriate way to help manage the disturbance?

Table 5. The MDCA used for deciding on measures to improve barriers for the drinking water facility.

Alternatives	Criteria			Rank
	Cost	Time	Increased resilience
Expanded opportunities for reserve water	3.5 MSEK	365 days	60%	3
Sensors for early detection	1.5 MSEK	145 days	80%	2
Crisis management staffing	0.8 MSEK	90 days	50%	1

Øien, K., A. Jovanović, T. O. Grøtan, A. Choudhary, A. Øren, K. Tetlak, L. Bodsberg, and M. Jelic. 2019. SmartResilience D3.8: Assessing Resilience Level of Smart Critical Infrastructures Based on Indicators. EU project SmartResilience, Project Nr. 700621.

 Google Scholar