Information-Sharing in Cross-Border Critical Infrastructure Resilience: Evaluating the Benefits of a Digital Platform

Modern Critical Infrastructure (CI) systems are becoming increasingly interconnected across international borders. Even minor disruptions to these complex systems can have significant impacts on the economic and social functions of the affected country and beyond. To increase the resilience of CI, stakeholder organizations must collaborate and exchange information at the local level throughout the Emergency Management (EM) cycle. Public-Private Collaborations (PPCs) allow for a more coordinated and effective response to threats and emergencies that may arise by bringing together the stakeholders. The Critical Infrastructure Platform (PIC) is an ICT tool aimed to support a cross-border regional resilience strategy between Lombardy Region (Italy) and Canton Ticino (Switzerland), by enabling secure and effective information-sharing, inter-organizational risk assessment, monitoring, and operational coordination under critical operating conditions and severe disruptive events. The paper evaluates the benefits of PIC to improve the resilience of networked CI systems in a cross-border region by its capacity to address common barriers and challenges of inter-organizational information-sharing and collaboration.

Keywords: Critical infrastructure resilience, Cross-border, Information-sharing, Digital platform, Benefits.

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