ABSTRACT
Critical infrastructures and critical societal functions, such as energy supply, water distribution, and communication services play a key role in forming resilient1 communities, regions and nations (O’Rourke 2007). By ensuring that infrastructures and societal functions can absorb and withstand hazardous events (including natural, mad-made or intentional) and recover quickly from emergencies and disasters, the societal impacts on communities and regions can be drastically reduced. In several past events damages to critical infrastructure and societal functions have significantly contributed to the negative consequences of those events, such as the WTC attacks in 2001 (Mendonca & Wallace 2006) Hurricane Katrina (Boin & McConnell 2007; Leavitt & Kiefer 2006) and the Canadian ice storm in 1998 (Chang et al. 2007).
