Resilience capacities assessment for critical infrastructures disruption: READ pilot applications (part 2)

The study aims at supporting the stakeholders involved in the Emergency Management (EM) activities to tackle the challenges related to scenarios involving interdependent Critical Infrastructure (CI) systems, by building resilience. Our approach to enhancing resilience is capabilities based, which supports the identification, assessment and development of specific capabilities required to prepare to, cope with and recover from CI disruptions within the EM set-up. The primary objective is to enable and foster collaborative EM in the context of Public-Private Collaborations (e.g. interdependent, multi-sectoral, and multi-stakeholder) for CI resilience. The READ framework and related tool has been tested to support the stakeholders involved in EM and post-stress activities, including CI operators, to assess their own resilience capacities with respect to cross-border disruptions and thus identify the main areas where progress is needed. Two pilot cases were used to validate the READ framework and tool, and to demonstrate the applicability of the approach in the context of regional Public-Private Collaborations for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience with different degree of development and level of maturity, namely Basque Country (Spain) and Lombardy Region (Italy). The practitioners’ feedback from both application cases confirmed the usefulness of such approach and helped to identify areas for future research and improvement.