Resilience

This work builds on the Commission’s first National Infrastructure Assessment and forms the basis for resilience to be addressed in future Assessments.

The Commission’s study explored how the UK’s economic infrastructure has, for the most part, proved resilient to shocks and stresses over recent years. It examined the steps needed to maintain a resilient system: a proactive approach to resilience, facing up to the possibility of different or harder challenges in the future.

Various consultations and expert reports informed the study, and details of these can be found in the Supporting Evidence tab on the left.

In the final report of the study – Anticipate, react, recover – Resilient infrastructure systems – the Commission concludes that there is a need for a new framework for resilience which anticipates future shocks and stresses; improves actions to resist, absorb and recover from them by testing for vulnerabilities; values resilience properly; and drives adaptation before it is too late. The Commission has made three recommendations to government, which will help to deliver the framework for resilience.

The terms of reference for this study were issued by the government in October 2018. You can read the Chancellor’s full letter here.

Resilience Study Terms of Reference

Context

1. The resilience of our economic infrastructure is critical to the success of our economy. Our quality of life is dependent not only on having the right infrastructure, but on infrastructure systems which can respond to future challenges, such as the Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges, and future shocks, whether from natural hazards, malicious threats or accidents.

2. Society has developed increasingly complex and interdependent infrastructure systems to enable the efficient delivery of infrastructure services such as utilities and the movement of goods, people and information. This has resulted in vulnerabilities including accidents and disruption but there should also be opportunities to enhance resilience through better understanding and design of infrastructure systems as well as smarter and faster responses.

3. Over recent years there have been improvements in the understanding of infrastructure interdependencies. The development of the Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure1 provides a particular opportunity to undertake an in-depth analysis of resilience, working with key stakeholders, to inform a future approach ahead of the next National Infrastructure Assessment.

Scope

4. The Government asks the Commission to:
a) Review UK and international knowledge and approaches relating to the resilience of current and future economic infrastructure systems, including how this can be best understood, definitions, ways of assessing resilience, treatment of interdependencies and the management of the risk from different threats and hazards
b) Develop an understanding of public expectations and response to the potential loss of infrastructure services and review alternative options and contingency planning, for example, in the light of technological advances such as cyber threats, and behavioural changes
c) Develop an analytical approach that can be used to better understand the resilience of economic infrastructure systems, and the costs and benefits of measures to improve this
d) Undertake pilot analysis of infrastructure systems (for example through ‘stress tests’ of sectors, geographical areas or companies) to identify actions to improve the resilience of national infrastructure systems and inform investment decisions
e) Make recommendations to government on the resilience of economic infrastructure, how best to assess resilience, sharing of good practice, actions needed and data collection or analysis to inform the next National Infrastructure Assessment

5. Issues relating to foreign ownership, specific critical national infrastructure assets, industrial relations, national security concerns, the security of supply chains, and issues relating to the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union are out of scope. Analysis of malicious threats, skills and the financial stability of infrastructure operators are expected to be limited to the scoping stages of the study.

6. In carrying out its study, the government asks the Commission to:
a) Consult widely with relevant experts, including from Cabinet Office, Government Departments, the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, National Cyber Security Centre, the Committee on Climate Change, OECD7, devolved administrations, international counterparts, infrastructure operators, regulators, researchers, practitioners, professional bodies and infrastructure users
b) Consider the potential for cascade failures outside the economic infrastructure sectors, including social infrastructure and business supply chains
c) Consider whether managed adaptive approaches can be used to cope with uncertain changes over the next 30 – 50 years
d) Ensure recommendations are consistent with the Commission’s fiscal and economic remits

Timing

7. The Commission should undertake a two-stage approach to the study with a scoping report identifying the proposed methods and analysis, followed by a final report, provisionally by spring 2020.

The first part was a scoping phase, which concluded in September 2019 with the publication of the Resilience Study scoping report. As part of the scoping work, the Commission initiated expert reviews of:

• Arup (2019), UK levels of infrastructure service (with technical annex)
• Atkins (2019), Case studies of international approaches to levels of service
• BritainThinks (2019) Research on public views of resilience
• UCL (2019), Questions for resilience assessment
• UCL (2019), Analytical approaches to resilience

The Commission also undertook extensive consultation through a scoping workshop, expert engagement and written consultation, which closed on 1 April 2019. A summary of the consultation responses was published alongside the scoping report.

In the main phase of the study, the Commission gathered further evidence and undertook in depth analysis to help answer the questions raised by the scoping report. This included:

• Arup (2020), System mapping for UK infrastructure systems decision making
• Bristol University (2020), Understanding emergent behaviour within the economic infrastructure system-of-systems
• ITRC (2020), Systems analysis of interdependent network vulnerabilities
• Steer (2020), Investigating the methods used to set committed levels of service
• UCL (2020), Review of emergent behaviours of systems comparable to infrastructure systems

The Commission also considered responses to a call for evidence, which was launched alongside the scoping report and closed on 20 October 2019.

In addition to the main report, the Commission has published a set of technical annexes:

• Impact and costing note
• Principles for setting levels of service
• Case studies and good practice for resilience