Infrastructure recovery needs shared targets

NIST added a conference paper to its publications register on 29 September 2026 after its presentation at ICONHIC 2026 from 29 June to 2 July. The authors examine lifeline infrastructure: water, wastewater, electric power, fuel, communications and transport systems whose services depend on one another. Their central finding is a planning gap. Component codes usually focus on safety or asset performance, while consistent system-level guidance for service continuity and recovery remains incomplete.

The paper separates two measures that operators often blur. A performance objective describes the planned damage or impaired state under a specified hazard scenario. A recovery-time objective describes how long it should take to restore basic service. The authors argue that these objectives should be aligned from the whole system down to components and organisational groups, using common procedures across sectors.

Interdependence changes the sequence. Water recovery may require electric power and transport, while power restoration may require fuel and access. The paper therefore recommends identifying dependent services, customer criticality, component recovery factors and system-level recovery time. It also warns that stronger individual components do not automatically deliver the target system outcome because network behaviour and organisational actions interact.

Dunes Bureau interpretation: asset owners should turn this framework into a dependency ledger. For each essential service, record the upstream power, water, communications, fuel, access and staffing needed to restore it; name the responsible organisation; and set the latest acceptable return time. A cross-system exercise should then test whether all parties are planning to receive and provide the same services in the same sequence.

For fast-growing cities, industrial zones and logistics hubs, this approach can sharpen capital allocation. A redundant asset has limited value if the service it relies on remains unavailable. Investment cases should therefore show which network bottleneck is removed, which recovery target improves and whether the operating teams can execute the assumed handover. These are proposed management tests, not results reported by NIST.

The paper proposes a process rather than a completed standard, cost estimate or guaranteed recovery outcome. Its earthquake-focused frameworks require modification before use for other hazards, and the authors identify further research needs. The practical advance is a common language for joining engineering, continuity planning and inter-operator coordination before capital plans are treated as resilience plans.