IMPROVER relied on a number of living labs and associate partners to enable the consortium to apply the methodologies and tools which were under development within the project. These living labs and associate partners also contributed to the evaluation of the projects outcomes and provided important input as to the expected features of the projects outcomes. The project also liaised closely with the ERNCIP project through JRC as partners in both, and held workshops with the ERNCIP operators to contribute background information, commentary and feedback on various aspects of the project.
The project was structured to follow four distinct stages. Stage1 was a survey of the available approaches for the definition, implementation and evaluation of resilience concepts to critical infrastructure. The goal of this work was to collect evidence of resilience related methodologies around the world from practice, from policy and from research. This was needed so as not to reinvent the concept from scratch and to account for current activities. The main outcome of this stage was a report of resilience concepts, discussing the meaning of the word and its application. This was then used to identify promising available approaches around the world which could be adapted or directly used to assess European infrastructure resilience.
The second stage of the project comprised an evaluation of promising available approaches. The work here comprised the application of existing resilience analysis or assessment methodologies within the projects living labs and then the assessment of the efficacy of these methodologies based on a number of criteria. These criteria were identified during the survey stage as well as through discussion with the living labs, the associate partners and the ERNCIP operators. While conducting this evaluation, the project team also developed a simple indicator based resilience assessment methodology, the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Index (CIRI). Conclusions from this evaluation included: that there seems not to be any strict objective way to evaluate resilience, and in fact that much depends on what one wants to do with a resilience assessment approach, how much one is ready put effort and time to it, and who is doing it.
This led to the conclusion that in the subsequent phases of the project that the IMPROVER consortium should aim at combining – in so far it is possible and commensurable – the identified/perceived pros while avoiding the identified/perceived cons. This was achieved by embracing the different paradigms underpinning resilience analysis approaches and by developing three different assessment methodologies which had different objectives. These were continued development of the CIRI methodology, as well as a technological resilience assessment methodology (ITRA), and an organisational resilience assessment methodology (IORA).
Finally, the evaluation of existing methodologies resulted in the conclusion that these should be incorporated in a CI resilience assessment framework which is both well-defined but which includes also a possibility to flexibly account for the idiosyncrasies of different type of CI and its operators. Such a general framework for resilience assessment of CI should remain compatible with the current guidelines and practices for risk assessments of the Member States and should integrate the paradigm of resilience into the risk assessment process according to ISO 31000.
Based on these conclusions, the third stage of the project was the development of the ICI-REF, the IMPROVER Critical Infrastructure Framework; a framework supported by ITRA and IORA however which was loosely enough defined such that alternative tools and methodologies could be implemented if desired by an infrastructure operator. ICI-REF had as its foundation the formalisation of definitions associated with resilience management. The ICI-REF integrates the paradigm of resilience with the risk management process of ISO 31000. This third stage also included the development of ITRA and IORA.
The final stage of the project was a demonstration of the methodologies and tools in application to two of the projects living labs. The application of the CIRI, IORA and ITRA methodologies followed the process of the ICI-REF, thus the overall framework was tested, as well as the three assessment methodologies.
