On the 9 and 10 May 2018 Lloyd’s Register foundation hosted their second international conference at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London. Richard Clegg’s opening address described the purpose of the conference as to pull together the Lloyd’s Register Foundation grants community to interact and forge collaborations. On day two, the Resilience Shift hosted a high energy workshop with that objective in mind.

Our interactive exercise used a value chain approach to explore how tools, approaches and frameworks can create opportunities to deliver resilience value for critical infrastructure, drawing on the fresh perspectives and insights of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation grants community.

We asked participants to think about the services delivered by critical infrastructure, the shocks and stresses it might be exposed to and its vulnerabilities. We then asked for suggested frameworks, tools and approaches that could be used by various actors to influence decision makers towards a more resilient outcome. Participants focused on critical infrastructure in terms of the services that they help to deliver – as opposed to the physical assets themselves.

The feedback session at the end of the exercise revealed the following ideas about how we might approach critical infrastructure from diagnosis through to service provision:

• A ‘servicization’ approach should be used where the service provided is tested for resilience at each stage of the value chain, this means asking what the user is attempting to achieve through the critical infrastructure which may result in an alternative infrastructure solution
• Consideration of both ‘soft path’ – behavioural change, as well as ‘hard path’ – physical infrastructure when determining infrastructure solutions
• Considering natural systems as a key part of infrastructure, leading to greater overall resilience
• Adopting a ‘whole systems’ approach
• Using simulations and scenario techniques to test critical infrastructure service resilience
• Engaging widely with institutions and governance organisations who may not be directly responsible for commissioning the physical infrastructure but who may be an indirect stakeholder
• Actively seeking diverse solutions that maximise redundancy within the system
• Introducing investment/financing models and incentivising green over grey infrastructure
• Adopting ‘upstream thinking’ through novel economic measures e.g. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) which would drive consideration of the wider systems impacted by infrastructure users
• Consideration of the internet of things (IOT) as part of maintenance and monitoring plans

Thank you again to everyone who participated in the workshop, your inputs and ideas are greatly appreciated and will be considered by the team leading our work on Ways to make resilience tangible, practical and relevant.

Register with us here to keep in touch about our latest developments and opportunities – we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Note: Defining Critical Infrastructure Services

Our research suggests that critical infrastructure is a common term used broadly by different organisations and countries, thereby reinforcing the significance of infrastructure in society. A clear majority of the critical infrastructure definitions focus on the services that are enabled by critical infrastructure, highlighting that they are considered critical based on the consequence of its failure, which would create a significant impact to human life, economic activity and/or national security. A failure in this context should be understood as a system which is prevented from continuing to perform its function – as opposed to the failure of a physical asset, which is understood as a damage or loss.