iCT resilience in the EU
Fabio Bisogni, Simona Cavallini and Cristiano Proietti 
detail a new tool set up to enable simulations of the 
impact of country-wide and Europe-wide critical 
infrastructure ICT failure
G
lobalisation and the ongoing organisational, sectorial, national or European level has proved diffi cult. However,
integration of states within the EU in recent years, European policymakers have focused greater attention on the role of
have promoted the development information infrastructures in the overall context of critical infrastructures and in 2006
of European and international we witnessed the initial stages of this in the ‘A strategy for a Secure Information Society
networks and infrastructures. With the – “Dialogue, partnership and empowerment”’ communication.
establishment of such networks comes a In order to investigate the socio-economic effects of critical events, the European
range of associated interdependencies. Council established the programme ‘Prevention Preparedness and Consequence
In addition, the very infrastructure upon Management of Terrorism and other related Risks’ in 2007. This programme has played
which our society is based, including a key role in the development of the ‘European Programme for Critical Infrastructure
all of the publicly-utilised functions and Protection’ (EPCIP), as well as policy measures aiming at upholding and guaranteeing
services which enable us to maintain our security and public order during a crisis situation.
social and productive relationships, as
well as the framework for further socio- The VIS project
economic development, is itself becoming A further development resulting from this programme was the appointment of the
increasingly global and interconnected. FORMIT Foundation in 2008 to carry out a research project entitled ‘The Vulnerability of
As a consequence, some infrastructures Information Systems and its inter-sectorial economic and social impacts’ .
have become critical to our business The VIS project is designed to produce a series of ranking tables showing the extent
environments and to the progress of our of the socio-economic damage suffered by various economic sectors as a result of the
social activities. Among these critical unexpected breakdown of critical ICT infrastructures. The VIS model was developed
infrastructures, the information systems as a theorectical framework which is based on the hypothesis that the larger the use of
infrastructure is becoming increasingly technology in production processes the higher the damage resulting from cases of ICT
important. Information systems have failure. This also takes into consideration the impact of sectorial interdependencies.
established a somewhat unique position From a technical perspective, the VIS model is a computational general equilibrium
within our global infrastructures in that model where a supply side (production activities of enterprises within the identifi ed
they are deeply embedded in our societal economic sectors) and a demand side (fi nal consumption activities of individuals and
infrastructure in general, while also intermediate consumption of enterprises within the identifi ed economic sectors) defi ne
playing a key role in the context of other the equilibrium condition that an ICT breakdown disrupts. In addition, a computer-based
critical infrastructures and in acting as tool, VIS-S (VIS Simulator) was developed to simulate different kinds of ICT breakdowns,
a link between different infrastructure assessing the consequent cascading effects and calculating the socio-economic
systems. consequences on specifi c sectors and on the entire industrial system.
From a business perspective,
information systems play a critical role A sample study
in our ability to produce products or In order to measure the potential impacts of ICT breakdowns, an unexpected negative
provide services. As a result, any failure shock to the quantities of goods and services produced by the Computer and Related
in the information infrastructure can have Activities
i
sector was generated. Effects on the same ICT sector, on the other industrial
potential economic consequences for all sectors, and on the entire economic system as well, strictly depend on breakdown intensity
industry sectors given the pervasiveness of (e.g. a 10% reduction of the normal production output of the ICT sector) and on recovery
such information and the communication capability of the ICT sector (in terms of recovery path and the time required to restore the
systems in our business activities. full productive capacity lost as consequence of the breakdown).
e
In order to assess the socio-economic impact of the failure in critical ICT infrastructure,
The impact of an ICT failure a set of impact variables were devised:
Despite many acknowledging the Percentage deviation in terms of output – This impact variable captures the reduction
potential severity of the impact of an ICT in the production output due to the ICT breakdown when compared to the situation under
breakdown, conducting a quantitative ‘normal’ circumstances. The percentage output deviation in the case of an ICT failure is, for
assessment of such impacts on an all the economic sectors, negative or at most zero.
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2  Continuity  January/February 2010
Cont Jan/Feb 2010_insides.indd 24 3/2/10 14:51:57
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