Focal Report 7: SKI: Resilience and Risk Management in Critical Infrastructure Protection Policy

This focal report analyzes the relationship between resilience and risk management, which is the predominant methodology of protection policies. It is argued that there are three main conceptualizations of the risk-resilience relationship in the theoretical literature and in CIP-policy documents: resilience as the goal of risk management, resilience as part of risk management and resilience as alternative to risk management. The report describes the historical and theoretical background of each of these three conceptualizations, provides empirical examples, and outlines the practical relevance of the different perspectives. A final part describes how the Swiss Basic Strategy to CIP describes resilience and gives recommendations which of the risk-resilience conceptualizations fit best to the Swiss approach to CIP.