An Overview of Pilot Projects in Support of Critical Infrastructure Resilience

This paper describes two pilot projects undertaken in the Province of British Columbia (BC) by the Defence Research and Development Canada Centre for Security Science (DRDC CSS) in partnership with Emergency Management British Columbia (EMBC) and local communities. The pilot projects occurred between May 2012 and September 2013 with three communities of population ranging from 5000 to 90,000. Various aspects of CI resilience were targeted, from understanding and analysing dependencies to enhancing planning. Different analytical approaches were employed and evaluated, including architecture frameworks, soft systems methodology and value-focused thinking. In a previous paper describing the problem formulation and solution strategy, a number of challenges to CI resilience were identified, related to governance, trust, information sharing, culture, assessment methodologies and resources. Pilot projects are discussed here in the context of these challenges. Our experience has led us to hypothesize that it is not tools per se that communities want, but rather meaningful analyses performed with an understanding of the local environment.