Transport Infrastructure

Infrastructure is basic physical and organisational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. It can be generally defined as the set of interconnected structural elements that provide framework supporting an entire structure of development.

The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications, and so forth, and can be defined as "the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions."

In this document, we will only consider transport infrastructure. Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations necessary for transport, and may be roads, railways, airways, waterways, and terminals.

Roads

A road is a paved surface to facilitate the movement of people or goods with [#_Road_transport road transport] means, such as as automobiles, bicycles, buses, vans or trucks.

Roads on itself are not an interesting security target, but blocking a road will cause problems with the traffic flow and reachability of certain parts of the city or area. This can be prevented by designing a [#_Robustness robust road system] and to detect a disruption and minimize the consequences, using [#_Traffic_monitoring monitoring] and [#_Traffic_management_1 traffic management].

Rails

Rails are the infrastructure for [#_Rail_transport rail transport].

As for roads, rails on itself are not an interesting security target, but blocking a railroad will cause large problems with the rail transport.

Pedestrian / Bicycle paths

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Canals, rivers and waterways

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Subway system

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Bridges and fly-overs

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Terminals

A terminal is ...
Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo.

Examples of passenger terminals are airports, railway stations and bus stations.

Examples of terminals for cargo are warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations), and seaports.

All terminals are important for security, since it are potential targets for terrorists. Damage will have a big impact, both economically, life danger of people and by hampering the transportation process heavily. Therefore it is recommended to have an extensive and robust transportation system towards and from the terminal and to locate terminals outside urban areas.

Airports

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Train station

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Bus terminal

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Freight terminal

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Port

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Traffic intersections

At traffic intersections, a certain type of traffic infrastructure is intersecting. Mostly this concerns road intersections, though also rail and air intersections are possible.

To prevent incidents at road intersections, the traffic can be controlled with traffic signals.

Traffic intersections are an attractive target for terrorists, since damaging an intersection has larger consequences in terms of disrupting the traffic flow and number of possible injuries than for a road segment.

Possible measures to prevent attacks at important intersections are monitoring with cameras and providing sufficient route alternatives.

Criticality of infastructure

General

The concept of critical infrastructures (CI) and CI sectors is not self-evident. Rather, the sector designation is a permanent process of awareness rising on the political level, characterized by spatial and temporal variation and influenced by various national trends, by the political situation and current crises and disasters. Involving increasing accuracy and detailed perspectives, the process is dependent on public and trans-boundary discussion and views, but also on subjective/political perception, region-specific priorities and economic values. .

Predominant consensual sectors are physical-technical infrastructures such as energy infrastructures, ICT (information and communication technologies), water and transport infrastructures. Conversely, socio-cultural sectors (including administration, authorities and government units, security and emergency services, scientific, cultural and commercial facilities, media, but also the chemical and CBRNE-(chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear explosives)-related industry currently are rather heterogeneous in designation. Divergence in the assessment of criticality generally results from diverging national situations and (legislative and cultural) preconditions: Are there culturally valuable goods? Are there hazardous chemical and industrial goods? Are there security facilities? In case of positive answers to such questions, these sectors usually are assessed to be critical and risk prone both in definition and in the political perception and discourse.

In the EU, critical infrastructures are those physical and information technology facilities, networks, services, and assets, which, if disrupted or destroyed, would have a serious impact on the health, safety, security, economic well-being of citizens or the effective functioning of governments in EU Member States countries. The Council Directive 2008/114/EC on the identification and designation of European critical infrastructures (ECI) and the assessment of the need to improve their protection (EU, 2008) provides commonly adopted definitions of “critical infrastructure” and “European critical infrastructure”. Basically, owners, operators and respective member states hold the responsibility for CIP. The EU encourages the member states to set up national programmes for designation and qualitative and quantitative aspects, to accomplish sector identification and dependency studies and to elaborate a common terminology, general criteria, guidelines and procedures as a first step. Further steps include identification of deficiencies, suggestions for measures and financing, the implementation of minimum protection standards and their surveillance.

The EU-Directive 2008/114/EC introduces a practice to identify and designate European critical infrastructures (ECI), committing each member state to designating potential ECI according to the EU-definition and according to cross-sectoral criteria (casualties, economic and public effects) and sector specific criteria (taking into account individual sector characteristics). Further criteria to be considered, as addressed in the European Programme of Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP), are geographic scope of impact (when disrupted or destroyed), severity and consequences (public, economic, environmental, political and psychological effects, public health consequences) or geographic and sector specific dependencies.

The EU approach so far has covered the following critical infrastructure:

• Energy installations and networks
• Communications and Information Technologies
• Transport
• Water
• Production, Storage and Transport of Dangerous Goods
• Food
• Health Care
• Finance
• Government

Add EU criteria for criticality.

The EPCIP points out the all-hazard approach (prioritizing terrorism) and the principles of subsidiarity, complementarity, confidentiality, stakeholder cooperation, proportionality and sector-by-sector approach . The framework comprises the identification and designation of CI, an action plan, the establishment of a Critical Infrastructures Warning Information Network (CIWIN) and a CIP Contact and Expert Group; further the support of the member states, a contingency planning and the external dimension. The objectives to guarantee European-wide adequate and equal protection levels, minimal single points of failure and rapid and tested recovery processes were defined earlier on . Together with the EU Member States, the European Commission will develop guidelines and thresholds for criteria application. As a first step the directive addressed the energy and transport sectors differentiating subsectors for each (electricity, oil, gas respectively road, rail, air, inland waterways transport, ocean and short sea shipping, and ports).

Perception of criticality

The systematic analyses of citizens' perceived criticality of infrastructure and neces-sity to protect it is an essential component for the determination of security demands as a public good, also as related to strategic urban planning. A state of the art review leads to the following indicators for citizens’ subjective needs to provide for protection of critical infrastructure, as well as of their over-perception or under-perception of the criticality of that infrastructure.. Knowledge of such kind can for example help urban planners to design in protective measures that not only reflect objective vulnerability but also citizens’ security cultures. Thus, public support for urban planning that is conscious of security aspects can be enhanced and citizens’ acceptance of resulting built infrastructure enhanced.

List of indicators for assessment of subjective protection requirements of critical infrastructure

From this list of indicators, it also follows that subjective protection requirements, similar to risk perception, highly depend on individual level of information and knowl-edge, and thus strategic urban planning should be accompanied by a full-fledged public communication strategy in addressing security aspects. Personal experience and con-frontation with critical infrastructure breakdown play an essential role in citizens’ subjective perception of criticality and requirements to protect, as does the individual direct use of the respective critical infrastructure.

Protection of critical infrastructure

Critical infrastructure protection (CIP) has become a major issue in civil security, emergency management and natural hazard management. The all-hazard approach has gained ground on the international scale, and the comprehensive approach in security policies and security research has been advanced in order to meet current and future threats based on better integrated information, assessment, policies and capabilities.