The Centre for Resilience of Critical Infrastructure (CRCI) is an initiative of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Sciences & Engineering to advance the field of infrastructure engineering and the understanding and practice of infrastructure resilience. The CRCI builds upon the University’s existing world-class reputation in engineering and the built environment, bringing together expertise in research and practice from around the world, across government, academia and industry.
The CRCI defines infrastructure resilience as the continuity of an operation through extreme events. Infrastructure supports the operation, facilitates incident management and response and enables rapid post incident recovery. Resilience seeks to ensure continuity of the operation rather than to prevent the effects upon the asset.
Critical infrastructure, as defined by the CRCI, is physical, non-physical and technological. The aim is to understand the networks that exist between different elements to determine the enabling functions of an operation. By addressing critical infrastructure holistically, the Centre takes a multidisciplinary approach to research. To date, the Centre’s projects have been primarily industry focused. By being responsive to industry, the Centre is working on current and emerging requirements.
The CRCI structure and philosophy is based upon the government’s identified vision for future Canadian capability. The Centre was established due to the government concern that there exists a lack of competent skills and practice of resilience planning in Canada and a lack of professional understanding of the requirements. The CRCI was established to identify competencies amongst stakeholders, while the Sandford Fleming Forum seeks to address the issue of understanding by engaging directly with the professional community of governments, clients, consultants and academia to promote discussion on current and emerging threats and concepts.
Have questions? Please see FAQs or email crci@utoronto.ca.
