CCCC17A21 - Study for National Infrastructure Commission: Infrastructure and digital systems resilience

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is an independent body which provides the government with impartial, expert advice on major long-term infrastructure challenges.

The NIC is currently preparing the UK's first-ever National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA) setting out the Commission's assessment of long-term infrastructure needs on a 30-year time horizon with recommendations to the government.

The NIA will cover transport, digital communications, energy, water and wastewater, flood risk management and solid waste, making a holistic analysis which takes accounts of the various interdependencies between the sectors and cross-cutting issues.

This requirement explores issues that are likely to emerge from the increasing development and uptake of new technology across the different infrastructure sectors.

The increased use of information technology is expected to transform infrastructure in the medium-term, leading to networks of digitally connected systems.

In particular, the further development of the Internet of Things and cloud computing could make infrastructure services more efficient and flexible, facilitating 'smart' homes, grids and cities.

However, such changes will also make the components of future infrastructure systems more tightly coupled and complex - and therefore potentially more vulnerable to accidents and disruption.

For example, an increasing reliance on digital communications and uninterrupted power across different locations combined with the increasing complexity and interdependence of infrastructure systems increases the possibility of unintended consequences through unexpected and incomprehensible interactions.

These 'normal accidents', as they are referred to in the relevant academic literature, are expected to result in system failures affecting large populations, such as widespread or prolonged loss of energy or water supplies, or transport gridlock.

As part of the NIA, the NIC is keen to explore the trend towards digital infrastructure systems from a resilience perspective.

More specifically, the NIC's interest is in the potential for such systems to lead to frequent and highly disruptive accidents, distinct in origin (although not necessarily impact) from malicious acts.

The focus of this procurement is to use the available literature, data and evidence to identify and explore key issues - producing a set of recommendations including further issues to review.

The NIC may decide to commission further work on this topic, depending on whether it sees benefit to the NIA or other studies, based on the outputs of this procurement.