**Failures in a Critical Infrastructure System**

**Failures in a Critical Infrastructure System**

#### David Rehak and Martin Hromada David Rehak and Martin Hromada Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.70446

#### **Abstract**

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive overview of a critical infrastructure system, of failures and impacts that occur within it and of the resilience, which effectively reduces the risk of these impacts spreading on to dependent subsystems. The chapter presents a basic description of a critical infrastructure system and of the hierarchic arrangement of its subsystems and linkages between them. Critical infrastructure system failures, including their causes and impacts on dependent subsystems and on society as a whole, are presented in the following section. Particular focus is given to the propagation of impacts in a critical infrastructure system and the current approaches to their modeling. The chapter concludes by expounding on the resilience of critical infrastructure subsystems and its impact on the minimization of failures in critical infrastructure subsystems in circumstances involving emergencies.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.70446

**Keywords:** critical infrastructure, system, disruption, failure, impacts, resilience

#### **1. Introduction**

Society has traditionally depended on a broad variety of services as much as on the infrastructures providing them. Over time, some of these infrastructures, or rather their elements considered to be of vital importance to society, began to be regarded as critical. At present, these infrastructures constitute the critical infrastructure system [1], which consists of individual subsystems, i.e., sectors, subsectors, and elements. There are dependencies between critical infrastructure subsystems which can, due to a disruption in the functionality of one subsystem, spread to dependent subsystems, and thereby escalate the impacts from emergencies on society.

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
