Global Critical Infrastructure Workshop

Overview

Join us in Germany for our workshop on Critical Infrastructure, focused on regions outside of the United States. Global security interests are closely tied to the reliable provision of infrastructure, from the physical basing infrastructure that enables training and deployment to the communications infrastructure that connect forces. Recent attacks on infrastructure - both physical and cyber - highlight the risks to global defense, along with the impacts to military operations. This meeting will focus on bringing together global partners in security to discuss various challenges of infrastructure creation, modernization, protection, and recovery from disruptive incidents (both deliberate attacks and non-deliberate impacts of accidents, climate, etc.). We encourage the submission of abstracts that highlight analyses in these areas as they relate to security interests. Classified and unclassified tracks will be included.

Output: This workshop will produce a special report designed to inform senior leaders about challenges in global critical infrastructure and opportunities for the analytic community to enhance data-informed decision making.

Focus Area 1: Development and Modernization: Analyses related to the location, funding, modernization, and maintenance of infrastructure or related systems.

• How can we improve the management of aging infrastructure and what analytic tools exist to consider the placement of new infrastructure and prioritization of maintenance / rehabilitation?
• How are current and future conflicts shaping both military and civilian infrastructure?
• What are the major concerns for mobility and access that must be considered in prioritizing infrastructure development?
• How are nations exploiting infrastructure investments to impact global security dynamics and how can we assess the long-term effects?

Focus Area 2: Threats and Vulnerability: Analyses related to threats (both adversarial and natural), proactive measures, and climate change.

• What analytic tools are available when considering how to identify vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure?
• How are cyber threats impacting critical infrastructure and what actions need to be taken to address those threats?
• How are current conflicts and attacks on critical infrastructure (both military and civilian) informing prioritization of protection?
• What is the impact of climate change and new technologies and how can nations more effectively respond to those challenges?

Focus Area 3: Resilience: Analyses relating to disruption and responses, hardening, recovery, and adaptive capacity, including best practices and lessons learned.

• What analytic tools are available that provide guidance on improving the resilience of critical infrastructure assets and systems?
• Anticipating human response to disruption potentially requires different kinds of tools to increase resilience. What are the state of the art education, training, war games and exercises, designed to uncover human response and preparedness?
• How can we quantify the tradeoffs between different resilience goals for infrastructure, including hardening, recovery, extending capabilities, and adaptive capacity?
• How can military and civilian infrastructure support each other to be more resilient during conflict and peacetime?