The Centre for Resilience of Critical Infrastructure

Infrastructure Resilience Planning Course (APS 1024H)
Infrastructure Protection Course (APS1025H)
Infrastructure Planning Course (APS1031H)

Infrastructure has a purpose.  That purpose is to enable or facilitate something else, typically an operation of some kind.  This might be to move electricity from generator to consumer or providing potable water to the occupants of a city.   Often what is moved, and how it is moved, is of secondary importance; certainly the security, reliability and effectiveness of the service or produce delivered is crucial.   But is that all?

In fact, much can threaten the operation of even otherwise well-designed infrastructure.  Well designed infrastructure should continue to serve its purpose not only during normal operations, but even during a catastrophic incident and the recovery.  The infrastructure must therefore add net value to the operation and not be a liability, irrespective of the stressors on the operation. While one can protect that infrastructure against an event of some given likelihood, that protection does not necessarily translate to the operation being protected. No protection is absolute and at some stage the protection to that infrastructure will fail and with it often the operation that it enables. The performance of New York City operations during and following Hurricane Sandy is a case in point. Therefore, even as protection of infrastructure is important and a valuable tool, it does not deliver assurance of operational survival unless set within a strategic resilience plan. The Centre for Resilience of Critical Infrastructure looks specifically at that strategic planning of resilient infrastructure and how it can be delivered.

What then is resilience?    Put simply, resilience is the ability to absorb, adapt and quickly recover from a catastrophic event.   Interestingly, what has become progressively clearer is that using a resilience approach is no more expensive than a protection approach and quite often the whole project cost is significantly less, even up to 60% less.

So, why isn't design for resilience practised more widely?   Resilience was more widely practised though since the end of the Cold War steadily lost favour to more tangible practices and ultimately came down to an institutional comfort with process over product. Today, amid more frequent and extreme weather events, infrastructure owners and insurers increasingly seek assurance that operations will not fail due to the infrastructure and that the capital investment made today will not become a risk liability tomorrow.  Thus, resilience planning is important, indeed, and economically justified.

Present Context.    There is a steady and definite move back towards resilience planning by government and industry alike. To plan resilience one must work from first principles and understand the operation, its environment and stresses. One cannot simply follow a process or checklist and expect it to be successful because every operation is different.  The courses in this sequence are designed to prepare a first-principles approach to providing resilience to infrastructure design and operation.

Course Design.    Resilience Planning is most efficiently conducted in parallel to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and draws on much of the same source data, but asks an essentially different question "How can the operation continue despite catastrophic failure of one or more of its enablers?" To address this question, one needs to understand the operation, its tolerances and thresholds, the organisational structures and risk appetite, the operating environment and all-hazards before one can make informed assessments of how different functions and infrastructure are inter- and intradependent, develop mitigation strategies and so develop the selected strategy into a resilience plan. This is the subject of the Infrastructure Resilience Planning Course. This highly rewarding course also explores the multidimensional nature[1] of infrastructure and its symbiotic relationship with the operating environment, the nature of resilience and specifically the balance of demand and dependency management. Armed with the Resilience Plan, one now needs to design its implementation, maintaining a clear balance between the infrastructure, organisational and procedural measures within the operating context. Focusing on the design of the infrastructure resilience plan, one needs to determine how the different security measures are best integrated to ensure optimum efficiency. This is the subject of the more practical Infrastructure Protection Course. Understanding the stressors upon an operation is a complex matter, easily referred to and less easy to practice. The All-Hazards Course looks at the full spectrum of hazards and how this can be analysed and presented in a form accessible for risk assessment.

Infrastructure Resilience Planning Course (APS 1024H). This graduate course explores the concepts and tools in the infrastructure resilience planning process. It is about critical thinking with an applied science bias and incorporates the contextual influences of business continuity, socio-economics and the physical environment. The class regularly comprises of a mixture of disciplines including law, business, architecture and health as well as engineers with a wide variety of backgrounds and responsible experience. Upon completion, students will be able to inform, manage and use the [Operational] Resilience Plan, becoming an intelligent client for the strategic design and operation of resilient infrastructure systems. There are 26 contact hours, 26 project hours, and a final examination. In order to be accessible to those already in professional practice, the course is run over four consecutive Saturdays in the fall semester (current times can be found on the APS website under ENGINEERING AND SOCIETY). This course is capped at 42 students.

Infrastructure Protection Course (APS1025H). This graduate course is about the delivery of infrastructure protection within an infrastructure resilience plan. It builds the principles and concepts from historical example to present an approach to developing the design requirements that will allow the Resilience Plan to be implemented. The threat and hazard spectra and resiliency requirements are extracted to develop a design concept, a site layout and the protection system integration. The course consists of a critical application of resilience parameters to a proposed and existing infrastructure. Upon completion, students will be able to manage the delivery of the infrastructure protection component of Operational Resiliency, as well as be an intelligent client for the integration of security measures. The course comprises 26 contact hours, 26 project hours, and a final examination. The Infrastructure Resilience Planning Course is generally a pre-requisite for this course, though this requirement can be waived for those with relevant responsible experience. An understanding of structural (seismic or blast) resilience is also required for those wishing to practice this as part of infrastructure design. In order to be accessible to those already in professional practice, the course is run over four consecutive Saturdays in the winter semester (current times can be found on the APS website under ENGINEERING AND SOCIETY). This course needs a minimum of 16 to run and is capped at 36 students.

Infrastructure Planning Course (APS1031H). This course is a guided exploration of infrastructure planning through a fundamental understanding of first principles and discussion about their application to various aspects of the discipline. This will include strategic planning, cost, finance, risk, resilience, design and the different applications from facilities to utilities, disaster relief and policy development. Guest presentations by recognized Subject Matter Experts round out the practical appreciation with case studies. The course is accessible to undergraduates, while providing an essentially post-graduate perspective. Given the enormity of this field, detailed exploration of any of the lecture topics is not possible. Instead, students will be encouraged to read further into the topics of interest and directed to existing courses that explore the topic in greater detail. Current times can be found on the APS website under ENGINEERING AND SOCIETY.

All-Hazards Course. This graduate course concerns the collation and analysis of hazard information to inform effective risk assessment, relying above all on critical thinking. A tool used in Resilience Planning, it is also relevant to Business Continuity Planning, ERM and other strategic planning processes. The course is designed for a multi-disciplinary audience. Upon completion, students will be able to use all-hazards analysis effectively and understand its application and limitations. The course comprises of 20 contact hours, 30 project hours, and a final examination. There are no pre-requisites.  In order to be accessible to those already in professional practice, the course is run over four consecutive Saturdays.  This course is capped at 32 students.