Designating Regional Elements System in a Critical Infrastructure System in the Context of the Czech Republic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper provides an excellent review of the numerous approaches to identifying critical infrastructure and the quantitative and qualitative methods used in these approaches.  The proposed framework is a useful way to organize the principal strengths of these approaches and combine them in a way that could be useful to practitioners who seek to identify critical infrastructure within a designated region.  

The "bottom-up" or "progressive" approach is not a new concept.  Multiple jurisdictions (regional authorities, states/provinces, territories) have applied this way of systems thinking in identifying critical infrastructure in light of both human-caused incidents (intentional and unintentional) and natural events.  In the US, following the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks, multiple agencies developed methodologies and analysis tools (many referenced in the paper) and guidance was given for both "top down" (national critical infrastructure) and "bottom up" (state level assessments) and were used to make investment decisions at both the national and state/local levels. 

The idea of "consequence thresholds" was incorporated in a methodology for identifying critical transportation infrastructure developed through the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) - see http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/160337.aspx) so that qualitative factors could be incorporated into the analysis.  This helped move the discussion from traditional risk analysis (threat/vulnerability x likelihood x consequences) to a consequence-based approach to critical infrastructure protection, especially when the threat and likelihood were changing and difficult to quantify.  However, the NCHRP project and report did not go into depth regarding related methods and tools to the extent this paper has presented. [Disclaimer: I was a primary contributor to the referenced NCHRP report]

I think this paper merits publication because it provides a retrospective into the variety of methods and tools for identifying critical infrastructure that have been developed and applied over the last several decades and provides a systems framework for their application that may prove useful to practitioners.

My greatest concern is with the case study.  It is not clear exactly what the results of the case study are in terms of critical infrastructure.  The visualization of the region of interest shows the road network (1st, 2nd, 3rd class roadways) but I did not see any indication of which of those roadways proved to be critical within the region.  It is also not clear how the analysis of this region would be integrated with contiguous regions so that the "bottom up" analysis provides a comprehensive view of critical infrastructure on a broader scale.  Perhaps the case study could be expanded to address these concerns.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper aims to present a proposal for a better design of the critical infrastructure systems at regional level, using a bottom-up approach.

In the introduction section the authors must provide the context and the need with a brief explanation about the objectives of the paper. Why is interesting to carry out an analysis at regional level? Which are the characteristics and the demands about critical infrastructures at regional level?

Some relevant definitions in the paper, like “critical infrastructures” and “region” or “regional”, are not well justified. What is considered region or regional changes from one country to another, for that reason is interesting clearly define this element in this paper.

The paper lacks providing and defining the general context of the study and analysis. In this sense, the context of the Czech Republic should be introduced at the beginning as the authors refers to this country throughout the document. Moreover, the authors present in section 4 a case study that has not been mentioned neither in the abstract nor in the introduction.

The article lacks a state-of-the-art section. Part of analysis is made in the introduction section and the other part in the methodology section. In this sense, the objective of the paper is not well defined. Which is the aim of this paper? Is to present a methodology to assess/identify critical infrastructures at regional level or is to analyze tools, techniques or methods used to carry out the analysis? Once the authors have focused their objective a state of the art must be provided. What is the current state of art of this problem? What are the current gaps? What are the limitations that this research wants to overcome? What are the research questions?

The methodology followed by the authors in their study is not clearly explained. It seems they have conducted an academic and not academic literature review, but they don’t explain how this was conducted. For example, in the introduction section, the selection of the country’s strategies analyzed is out of context, why those and not others? Among how many countries was the selection made? and why are those the most representative for this study? The two criteria of selection must be better defined as they are very general.

The methodology section seems to be part of the state of the art as well, as the authors present the techniques and tools for analyzing the critical infrastructure system. However, the reader doesn’t get a general vision of the existing methodologies and frameworks for analyzing critical infrastructure systems. In this sense, they select a framework of analysis, and several tools, but they don’t explain which other frameworks and tools exist and if they have been analyzed, neither the advantages nor disadvantages of the chosen one among the others.

The authors want to address too many issues, and the information is mixed, this makes the reader get lost about the real aim of the paper. At the beginning you present a critical infrastructure analysis framework (figure 1) and in section 3 you provide a new methodology. How are they integrated? Afterwards you explain the tools and techniques that exist to analyze infrastructures. These tools are afterwards used in the methodology, but not all the steps of this methodology have tools. Moreover, what is the main contribution of this methodology? The units of analysis, or phases, proposed by the authors? Or the techniques and tools to carry out the analysis?

The resulting methodology presented is presented in section 3. The methodology must be introduced and summarize, they present a figure but is not well explained. For example, in the figure they talk about phases and in the description later, they refer to those phases with a different nomenclature.

It is not clear who the potential users of this methodology are. How can be implemented in practice? Who should be leading and participating in this process?

In 3.3 Element analysis, they refer to “preceding four steps”, which steps? Moreover, they talk about rules and criteria that are not defined. In the element analysis is missing a reference to the interdependencies among critical infrastructure’s sectors that is very relevant for their consequences on society, and it has been widely studied in the literature.

In section 3.4, element evaluation, the authors present a scale to sort out the infrastructures and introduce definitions “regional critical infrastructure” that should be made in the introduction section.

To better understand in which consists the element evaluation process it should be explained that consists of a four-step process and proceed them to explain each step in more detail.

Section 4 presents a case study that has not been introduced before, neither in the abstract nor in the introduction. The case study doesn’t follow the methodology presented in the previous section. It is difficult to understand the information provided by Table 2. Who, what stakeholders participated in this assessment?

The discussion and conclusion section must be improved. The authors must go further in presenting their contribution regarding the current state of the art as well as the advantages and limitations of their study.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has improved since the last version. However, there are still some issues that needs to be improved. 

Based on the methodology section, I do not see how the final proposed regional critical infrastructure element designation framework was obtained. Based on the methodology section how did you come up with this framework? How the results from the methodology section constitute the final framework? Why did you define four steps? How did you define the actions to be done in each step? etc?

Furthermore, the framework lacks to explain who should take part in the implementation process of this framework. What type of stakeholders should be part of the process? For example in step 3, you mention a qualitative assessment for the impact assessment. Who should take part in this qualitative assessment? Should the society be part of this impact assessment? How?

In the case study again, you lack to specify who took part in the process.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf