HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK
Safeguarding Australia
4 April 2003
Focus Group C. Infrastructure as a target
Chair: Professor Bruce McKellar
Raconteur: Dr Greg Scott
Critical infrastructure is that infrastructure which, if destroyed, degraded or rendered unavailable for an extended period, will significantly impact on social or economic well-being or affect national security or defence.
Infrastructure includes:
- utilities – electricity, water, gas
- transport – air, water, road, rail, nodes, hazardous chemicals, food chain
- communications
- services – health, education, police, fire, ambulance
- finance – banks, insurance, trading
- e-commerce and information networks
- national icons – landmarks, cultural heritage, tourism, sport
- government – defence, administration
- industry – defence, primary, secondary.
- private infrastructure.
Threats to infrastructure could be terrorism, fraud and other crime, natural disasters and natural transfer of pests and diseases. Research, modelling and construction undertaken to counter terrorism will also be effective against natural disasters.
Australia's National Counter-Terrorism Committee
The National Counter-Terrorism Committee (NCTC) was formed on 24 October 2002, when the Premiers, Chief Ministers and the Prime Minister signed the Inter-Governmental Agreement on counter-terrorism arrangements and flows from the decisions made by the Leaders' Summit on Transnational Crime and Terrorism in April 2002.
NCTC reports annually to the Council of Australian Governments on Australia's preparedness to deal with terrorism and its consequences. The first report, commissioned by the Prime Minister, Premiers and Chief Ministers on 24 October, was delivered at the COAG meeting on 6 December 2002.
A number of issues make these threats more complex and difficult to counter. Infrastructure is operated at several levels – national, state and local – and under different commercial or legal arrangements. Privately owned infrastructure has a different approach to costs and information-sharing. The types of infrastructure are interdependent – for example, water supplies depend on electricity, electricity depends on telecommunications – but some operators are ignorant of what services they depend on and what services depend on them.
Many operators defer expenditure until a response is required, rather than spending on prevention and detection. This makes infrastructure more vulnerable to threats. Who should pay for prevention? It's going to cost billions of dollars. A cost-benefit analysis will not be accurate when the likelihood of a terrorist attack or the introduction of an agricultural disease is hard to quantify. Earthquakes and floods are easier to predict.
Research topics
Audit security weaknesses in infrastructure. Produce computer programs that recognise patterns in data and identify weaknesses and unexpected threats. Rank degrees of vulnerability.
Does maximum efficiency (profit) require vulnerability? Can regulatory and financial market mechanisms be developed that increase the financial incentive to secure infrastructure?
Develop a matrix of risk and consequences.
Develop a matrix of risk and costs of reducing vulnerability – of building robustness and redundancy. Balance this against the cost of consequences.
Improve access to data, its integration and collaborative use.
Build scenarios and model front line responses in real time. Find methods to visualise or graphically present data and so better inform emergency services and public.
Model the interaction and interdependence of infrastructure networks, including availability of repair facilities and spare parts. Find fragmentation between regions.
Identify minimum operational requirements and ways to share resources between types of infrastructure and regions.
Design more robust infrastructure and self-healing systems.
Explore social aspects of prevention, detection and recovery – cultural variations and individual psychological responses.
Raise public awareness.
Find effective methods of command and control. Use existing mass media? Develop automated decision-making. Is this quicker and better than people in crisis?
