Disaster = Infrastructure + Hazard

We describe a framework for relating available data on hazards to impact on infrastructure. It is designed to be used by simulation platforms that may focus on a single infrastructure layer or aim to study interactions between interdependent layers. The Hazard Impact Framework (HIF) provides a flexible scheme for capturing and maintaining data on the response of elements of critical infrastructures to natural and man-made hazards. HIF also provides interfaces that enable systemwide assessment of the impact that these hazards have on the assets that construct and connect national critical infrastructures. A key use of HIF involves providing initial configurations of systems under study that include primary damage assessment across the elements of that system. These configurations can then be fed to simulation platforms to determine the level of service remaining in the damaged system, cascading effects that follow from layer interdependencies, or dynamic effects in the compromised system and to provide stochastic evaluation of likely outcomes to an event.