ResilienceResilience Guidebook for State of Idaho

Published 19 December 2019

In times of growing cyber threats and severe weather, resilience – the ability to continue providing emergency services while damaged infrastructure is restored – has emerged as a growing concern among leaders at state and local levels.

In times of growing cyber threats and severe weather, resilience – the ability to continue providing emergency services while damaged infrastructure is restored – has emerged as a growing concern among leaders at state and local levels. The world is held together with strands far more fragile than most people realize, said Kelly Wilson, Senior Critical Infrastructure analyst for Idaho National Laboratory.

“The capabilities aren’t what people think they are,” said Wilson, who came to INL this year from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Many states are running critical infrastructure programs at a bare-bones level.

For years, INL and DHS have led the national effort to address strategic planning issues in matters of safeguarding critical infrastructure such as factories, power plants, water treatment facilities and communications systems. INL has been leading resilience symposia since 2008, expanding it to Resilience Week in 2013. The latest, in San Antonio, took place the first week of November.

The lab also recently established the INL Resilience Optimization Center (IROC) to leverage multidisciplinary capabilities across lab facilities to address complex infrastructure resilience challenges.

INL says that now, the state of Idaho stands to benefit from all that expertise in its backyard. Building on the relationship with its home state, INL is developing an Idaho Infrastructure Guidebook, expected to be completed in 2020. It will offer details on infrastructure critical to community lifelines and the state’s economy.

Threats to infrastructure, both natural and of human origin, can be short-term or long-term, but the vulnerabilities are widespread and one infrastructure disaster can cascade into another.

The guidebook will examine Idaho’s supply chains to address critical questions: What does Idaho rely on from outside the state to enable its most critical food and agriculture infrastructure? What could cause a disruption to these supply chains?

Another section will look at natural and human-caused hazards, their frequency and consequences, as well as their likelihood of increasing or decreasing in the future. Last of all, information in each section will offer a picture of the current and future state of infrastructure and how it may affect plans to bring major industries to Idaho.

“There’s a strong correlation between economic development and resiliency,” Wilson said. The guidebook will offer an economic profile of the state’s most important or largest industries and employers and examine the economic drivers — micro and macro — that could change the state’s economic profile for better or worse.