Three Units of Analysis for Crisis Management and Critical Infrastructure Protection

Society’s welfare is very dependent on the effective performance of Critical Infrastructure (CI). Nowadays, CI constitutes a network of interconnected and interdependent entities. This means that a serious event in one CI can originate cascading events in the rest, leading to a serious crisis. As a consequence, Crisis Management (CM) and Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) should converge and integrate their findings, providing a more unified approach. One relevant issue when developing integrated CM/CIP research is what type of unit of analysis should be used, as it conditions the research objectives and questions. This paper presents an analysis of three different units of analysis used in CM research, focusing on the research objectives and questions used in them. These three different units of analysis have been used in a European CIP research project where three simulation models have been developed based on these three units of analysis.