Which “interconnected”?

I

If there were ever a term in need of greater specification and detailing, it’s “interconnected” (as in: “interconnected critical infrastructures”). Why?

Our research on a Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) of the US Coast Guard (USCG) found at least five major kinds of “interconnected” at work having sharp differences in the VTS’s real-time operations:

• Interoperability: Like the textbook interoperable energy utility (where electricity is crucial for the natural gas operations and vice versa), the VTS manages both vessel traffic and the
  regulated waterways that the vessels use (where managing the water ways affects management of the vessels and vice versa);

• Shared control variables: Water flows are a major control variable not just for VTS navigation purposes, but also for other infrastructures (most notably large water supplies and hydropower systems). This means that unexpected changes in how one infrastructure manages water flows can affect the management of the water flows by the other infrastructures (indeed, inter-infrastructural coordination around shared control variables was reported to us);

• Combined cycle of infrastructure operations: The USCG has a range of missions and operations, two of which are the VTS and the SAR (Search and Rescue) units. VTS combines with SAR to represent stages of this infrastructure’s operational cycle—normal operations and disrupted operations (VTS) along with failure and recovery (SAR). Not only are normal operations of the VTS already inter-infrastructural (by virtue of the shared control variables), but also the USCG’s Command and Control mission, including that for SAR, has an incident command facility and function for inter-infrastructural coordination during system failure and recovery;

• Variety of real-time configurations of interconnectivity: The VTS manages by virtue of resorting to a variety of interconnections with the vessels concerned. When VTS management of a common pool resource (the waterways) on behalf of inter-related users is disrupted or fails (e.g., because of defect in VTS communications), the interconnection configuration defaults over to the reciprocal one of vessel-to-vessel communication; and

• Inter-organizational linkages: USCG operations, including a VTS, are not only linked with other infrastructures through reliance on the Global Positioning System (GPS), but the Coast Guard’s position within the Department of Homeland Security makes it strategically located with respect to focusing on GPS vulnerabilities and strengths when it comes to the nation’s cyber-infrastructure.

Why do such differences matter?

II

Once different interconnectivities are taken seriously enough to compare and contrast, we better understand how major approaches to risk management of critical infrastructures can be mis-specified or downright misleading.

For example, what could seem more reasonable than a focus on system chokepoints and the most obvious way to do that is by focusing on where major infrastructures intersect or are adjacent to each other, right? Wrong.

It’s wiser is to focus on how spatially adjacent or collocated structures and facilities are actually managed within their respective infrastructure systems. It is possible that a system’s chokepoint may be elsewhere than at the site of collocated facilities, and that the element collocated could be lost without its respective system flipping into failure.

Just because elements from two or more infrastructures are spatially adjacent does not automatically mean those infrastructures have “to coordinate” unless, say, shared control variables, like electricity frequency and water flows, are involved.