Interdependency Analysis

This chapter provides the reader an overview of infrastructure dependencies and existing techniques used to evaluate them and to provide specific examples of cross-sector dependencies that are directly related to bulk power systems and the potential risk they pose. Efforts across the critical-infrastructure community at the federal, state, and local levels often lack an integrated, coordinated, and holistic approach to define and display the current state of security and resilience of critical-infrastructure interconnectedness, interdependencies, and associated all-hazards risks. This is primarily because critical infrastructures display a wide range of spatial, temporal, operational, organizational, and interdependency characteristics that can affect their ability to adapt to changing conditions. All-hazards analysis provides a hybrid functional analysis and geospatial modeling approach to cross-sector infrastructure dependency analysis.