Introduction

This Introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, to take one prominent example, has recognized this reality. Bloomberg has proposed investing $20 billion in what has been called managing the unavoidable. The plan, which seeks to make New York City more resilient to future storms and disasters, proposes everything from building new floodwalls to upgrading critical power and improving telecommunications infrastructures. Threats to critical infrastructure are not limited to natural disasters, as demonstrated by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the 2005 bombings of London's transit system, and the explosions that tore through the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported that our nation's critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) remain vulnerable to a wide variety of threats.