Societal consequences of critical infrastructure vulnerabilities: integrating power system and regional inoperability input-output models

Critical infrastructures provide indispensable services to society and extensive disruption of these give rise to large societal consequences. Most risk-related studies of critical infrastructures, however, focus rather narrowly on the direct consequences, e.g. expressed by services not supplied or cost of nonsupplied services. Although these measures might serve as a proxy for the direct societal effects, they are not suitable for gaining deeper insights into higher-order societal consequences of disruptions. To this end, the inoperability input-output model can be used, where national economic data is used as an approximation of interdependencies among societal sectors. The paper demonstrates an integrated model, consisting of a physical model of a critical infrastructure and a regional inoperability input-output model. In a case study a representative
model of the Swedish power transmission system, as the electric power system is generally recognized
as one of the most vital critical infrastructures, and Swedish regional economic input-output data is
used. The results from an analysis using this type of model can provide important information to societal riskrelated
decision making, e.g. by identifying regional areas characterized by both having vulnerable Power supply and strong electric power dependence. The proposed integrated model constitutes a valuable advance when assessing critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and societal consequences of failures.