Improving resilience management for critical infrastructures—strategies and practices across air traffic management and healthcare

Abstract

Recent natural and man-made disasters highlight that a more resilient approach to preparing for and dealing with such events is needed. To address this challenge, the main objective of the research and innovation H2020 project DARWIN is the development of European resilience management guidelines for Critical Infrastructures (CI). Based on a systematic literature survey with a world-wide scope and prioritization of resilience concepts, the guidelines have been developed taking into account everyday operations, contingency plans, training, etc. This paper describes insights gained from the adaptation of these guidelines in the domains of Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Healthcare (HC). A collaborative and iterative process has been defined involving relevant experts and practitioners. To ensure transnational, cross-sector applicability and uptake, a Community of Crisis and Resilience Practitioners (DARWIN DCoP) has been involved. The preliminary results indicate that a big step has been taken in moving from the resilience theory to practice. organization in the creation, assessment or improvement of its own reference guidelines, procedures and practices. What is really important is that DARWIN results are useful for our end users namely the Critical Infrastructures that include ATM and HC. For this purpose, the DARWIN Resilience management guidelines are designed to address disruptions, changes and opportunities; facilitate anticipation, adaptation, flexibility; and provide a foundation for an effective crisis response (Adini et al., 2017). An initial set of generic DRMG was produced (DARWIN D2.1, 2016) and then adapted to ATM and HC to make the guidelines more operational and usable in these domains. This paper presents the approach and methodology carried out to adapt the DRMG to both domains and discusses relevant results.