Protecting Infrastructure, Facilities, and People: How We Talk About Resilience

By Deborah Link, Ph.D.

June 26, 2025

We should discuss and address factors that cause vulnerability, thereby addressing resilience. The actions that we know how to do but are not addressing keep us vulnerable. Not only as individuals, but also as families, and consequently, as communities. Why discuss resilience when there is an unwillingness to address factors known to create vulnerability? To address resilience, we should talk about factors that cause vulnerability. Another term we could use is capability, or the lack of capability, to refer to vulnerability. Another term is gap, a capability gap, a resources gap, a leadership gap, etc. Resilience is a result of addressing vulnerability. But by talking about resilience, and simultaneously not addressing vulnerability, we talk about the ends and not the means. Talking about the means to become resilient would seem to be a more productive approach to achieving resilience, especially when we as individuals, and also collectively as communities, are barely working on the means. The means need to be in view and our focus, more than the end result we want to achieve-resilience.

Infrastructure Vulnerability

“Taking infrastructure for granted is not something the United States can afford to do” (Flynn & Burke, 2012, p. 817). Flynn and Burke (2012) discussed that when we consider that our power grid cannot withstand temperature fluctuations, and that aging pipelines fail, both around our homes and also around water supplies, that, “the picture is one of reckless neglect of the essential underpinnings of an advanced society” (p. 817). We read about this topic almost daily in the news, where municipal water supplies become tainted or leak, gas lines rupture or leak, and bridges fail from age. We see this and think about how much of our infrastructure is aging. When we think about aging infrastructure, we should also think about why vulnerabilities aren’t being addressed. Often, we hear it is not cost effective, but when viewed as an investment in the community, maintaining an aging infrastructure pays dividends to the community, primarily, resilience.

Protecting Facilities

We would do well to remember that those who commit terrorist attacks and target our infrastructure live among us and purposely do not appear suspicious (Bennett, 2018). Flynn and Burke (2012) also mentioned that less sophisticated attacks by homegrown operators and lone wolves are nearly impossible to prevent. Those who have the intention of targeting facilities work to build capability, seeking out technical and financial resources to plan and implement an attack. Communities should therefore work continuously to build the capability to prevent and deter potential attacks.

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, much more is understood and being done to do just that. Much of the private sector has worked to address their vulnerabilities to attacks, with a lot of guidance being provided by the federal government about how to address vulnerability. Things like teaching staff how to stay alert and report suspicious behavior if observed, understanding risk, devaluing a potential target, making sure a facility is secure and testing that security, actions to deter attacks, and knowing the plan to respond to any attack, for example. These actions are well known at this point, in the years since the September 11 attacks in the U.S. However, some facilities work to address vulnerability, and some do not, or have returned to being complacent. Which facilities are likely to be more resilient? We can’t know the definitive answer to that question without all the vulnerability measures taken being tested. But we do know that if an incident were to occur, the most vulnerable facilities, those that have taken little or no measures to reduce vulnerability, do not have protections in place. Therefore, they could not be considered resilient. As an attacker looks for and targets vulnerabilities, so should stakeholders be interested in protecting their investments when they wish to work toward becoming a resilient entity.

Protecting People

Buildings and our infrastructure aren’t the only areas where we find vulnerability. Again, to address resilience, we should address vulnerability. Police, Fire, and Military men and women do this when they train. The intent of their training is to reduce vulnerability, which simultaneously increases resilience. But if we work toward increasing resilience without working to reduce vulnerability, reduction in vulnerability is not necessarily the outcome. For example, using the training reference just mentioned, if a police officer or soldier is taught how to shoot a weapon, and even becomes highly proficient at shooting, but is never taught about how to take cover from someone who is shooting at them, how resilient are they? They have not addressed a vulnerability. If that individual is focused on resilience, they could say, “I am highly proficient at shooting, and therefore resilient”, and that would potentially be false. By focusing instead on what is lacking, in order to become more resilient, then a plan can be developed to identify areas of vulnerability-a vulnerability assessment. To put it another way, talking about resilience from the standpoint of what has been addressed only tells half of the story of resilience. Resilience is not achieved when vulnerabilities continue. If we were to discuss a resilience scale or levels, then it becomes obvious that we have not reached resilience, since anywhere on a scale that is not complete resilience is partial resilience, and that is not resilience. You may be working toward resilience, but you are not there yet. Working on something does not equal the end result. For example, working toward a college degree and enrolling in your first class does not mean you have the degree.

Preparedness used to be the buzz word. Vulnerability reduction was the phrase used before that and possibly was not a catchy enough phrase to draw attention to the problem of a lack of preparedness for emergencies. It seems that the term resilience has just replaced these. Do these words and phrases mean the same thing? These terms may all refer to avenues to becoming resilient, but that is not the issue, however. The issue is discussing and claiming resilience, when vulnerability still remains. For example, what if an individual or family has taken all the preparedness or resilience steps that are advocated. They have ‘go bags’ packed, extra food and water, medications, flashlights and extra batteries, extra blankets, shoes and clothing, and they have done it all and cannot prepare any further. What if that individual or family is not able to receive alert messages when something happens in their community, such as a chemical release or some other sudden onset event where they may need to either turn off their AC/heat and seal up their house, for example, or they want to or should evacuate? Are they resilient in that situation? By not addressing one vulnerability, haven’t all the other preparedness and resilience measures taken been cancelled out? Not only that but not receiving notification of an event may possibly be the greatest vulnerability, because it may not matter what else you have already done to prepare.

Some of the various notification methods are well-known to most of us, but many are not. It is imperative that all of us understand these. The National Weather Service (NWS) provides alerts and warnings about weather-related events, and most of us are very familiar with these. What about non-weather events though? The NWS is not going to notify us about those. If there is a national crisis the President of the United States does have the ability to notify and alert all U.S. citizens about the crisis. We can also receive alerts related to missing children through the Amber Alert capability. However, we all have to take additional steps to receive alerts that are not related to weather, a national crisis, or a missing child.

Where we live makes a difference. If something happens in our community that we need to be aware of, we need to already have signed up for alerts prior to anything happening-if the capability exists to alert the community. Depending on where you live, there may be alerting software that is managed by your local government. There may be a reverse 911 system, or the community may be a participant in IPAWS alerting as an alerting authority. We need to know that recently, it appears that when there is a lack of alerting capability within a community, such as those described above, officials are now often utilizing social media to issue alerts (Link, 2025).

There are a few problems with issuing alerts in this manner. First, social media is a platform where one can easily find false information. A second potential problem is that the percentage of the community that is constantly monitoring their local police, fire, and emergency management agency social media pages is likely not as high as it needs to be for that to be a primary alerting method (Link, 2025). Thirdly, a large percentage of the community is likely unaware that their first responder agencies will utilize social media to alert them in an emergency (Link, 2025). A notice to those in the community that they should expect to receive alerts through social media has likely not been provided. Sadly, in this case, individuals don’t know what they don’t know, and that not knowing could negate any ‘resilience’ they may have worked toward if a serious event were to occur.

Local officials should be aware of a gap in awareness of alerting and the implications. Once local officials are aware that there is a problem with a lack of awareness in their community, local officials should work hard to address it. They should be measuring how many people are signed up for alerts, and how many are signing up-they should be monitoring this and re-evaluating the level of participation regularly until at least most of the community is able to receive alerts. Unless most of the community is signed up to receive alerts, there is much more work to do, and that work should continue until an acceptable level of the community is able to receive alerts. To not work toward this end leaves individuals vulnerable, families vulnerable, and communities vulnerable…and not resilient.

References

Bennett, B. T. (2018). Understanding, assessing, and responding to terrorism: Protecting critical

infrastructure and personnel (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Flynn, S., & Burke, S. (2012). Building a resilient nation. In D. Kamien (Ed.), The McGraw-Hill homeland

security handbook (2nd ed., pp. 811-823). McGraw Hill Companies, Inc.

Link, D. (2025). Notifying the public in crisis situations [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Liberty

University.