July 14, 2011
Are All Critical Infrastructure Sectors Equally Critical?
by Eve Hinman
In a previous blog, I attempted to group the 18 DHS critical infrastructure sectors based on their need to be operational; for example, which sectors are needed immediately after a disaster, which are needed within a few days or weeks to stabilize the situation, and which will take months or years to regain full normalcy. In this blog, I take a slightly different approach that encourages community level needs to take a backseat to more critical and large-scale issues. This perspective requires individual communities to be sufficiently resourceful to survive for the few days, weeks, and months while the emergency services sector addresses the needs of water, transportation, and power utilities whose ability to function has a much broader impact. My selection of these top three sectors is based on the opinions of two well respected groups: the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE); and The Heritage Foundation.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has stated that the water sector is the single most important infrastructure not only because humans can’t survive more than a few days without clean water, but because it affects other infrastructure sectors including the transportation and power sectors. The ASCE has also made the argument more recently that the transportation sector would be an excellent sector to put our dollars towards because every dollar invested will contribute towards economic recovery. All our neglected, poorly constructed, over burdened transportation has needed a total overhaul for a very, very long time. Eisenhower invigorated the economy by creating a highway infrastructure in the 1950’s. Now we need a similar level of national commitment to recreate ourselves and create a world which is livable for future generations. Who better to fix the all these problems but civil engineers of course! Finally, we get to be the heroes again after years of being overshadowed by the tech boom!
The Heritage Foundation has a more controversial stance. It has suggested that we put our scarce U.S. dollars into the power sector by bolstering the electrical grid because without electricity life as we currently know it will cease to exist. Conversely, they claim that Transportation is comparably low in criticality since most people really don’t need it in a disaster. After all, we will have been hopefully evacuated if it was absolutely necessary. More likely we will shelter-in-place with our 72-hours worth of water and supplies. As long as the grid is in place, we will be OK.
I have some fondness for the opinion of The Heritage Foundation with regard to transportation. I have always had a hard time understanding how structures have importance in terms of mitigating losses in major disasters with the possible exception of water structures. As the architect Fred Krimgold said to me a few years ago – “Who cares if a building fails, as long as the function within the building is maintained.” Similarly, if a bridge or tunnel collapses there are typically alternative ways to get to the other side. Traffic jams are an inconvenience and casualties are unfortunate; however, major portions of the populace are only impacted slightly. For instance, consider the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis in 2007. This disaster caused 13 deaths and 145 injuries, impacting 140,000 motorists, resulting in $60 million in losses. Compare this to the 2003 electrical grid blackout in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada. In this disaster, 50 million people lost power for up to two days. It contributed to at least 11 deaths and cost an estimated $6 BILLION in losses. Although the press for both disasters was comparable, as was the loss of life, the blackout cost 100x more than the bridge collapse and affected 300x more people. In this way, I tend to agree that the power sector is more important than the transportation sector.
In conclusion, I believe in maintaining infrastructure networks that affect millions of people’s lives if a failure anywhere in the system occurs. Qualitatively, of the three sectors mentioned above, I rank the water sector the highest, then power, and finally transportation in terms of criticality at a community level. Water because it services both power and transportation utilities and is essential for life. Power is needed to stabilize our lives, and transportation is needed so that we can regain complete normalcy (i.e., go to work, grocery stores, pharmacy, etc.). If we have these things as well as a roof over our heads, we can keep out of the way of the emergency workers so that they can do what they do best –assist those people who are most in need of immediate attention after a disaster.
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