Resilience framework for critical infrastructures: An empirical study in a nuclear plant

The safety and proper functioning of Critical Infrastructures (Cis) are essential for ensuring the welfare of society, which puts the issue of improving their resilience level at the forefront of the field of crisis management. Most of the resilience-building principles defined in the literature do not cover all the dimensions that make up resilience and most of them only focus within the boundaries of the Cl, neglecting the role of the external agents that also have an influence on enhancing resilience. Furthermore, most of the principles that are present in the literature are theoretical and difficult to implement in practice. In light of this situation, the aim of this research is to present a holistic resilience framework for critical infrastructures in order to improve their resilience level by taking into account internal and external agents and covering all the resilience dimensions. Furthermore, this framework has been defined in close collaboration with the general management of Cis to facilitate its implementation in practice. Finally, in order to illustrate the value added of this framework it was implemented in a nuclear plant. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.