Abstract:

Critical infrastructures are the backbone of productivity and quality of life in every society. They are complex socio-technical systems whose disruption or destructions would lead to material and human losses. Therefore, their governance is a concern, in the context of the increasing understanding of the interdependencies of critical infrastructures, forming a system-of-systems, as well as the potential for cascading disruption. Space systems are an increasingly important component of both critical infrastructures and their governance mechanisms, providing services such as data gathering, command, control and coordination. The present article seeks to describe this relationship through a flow based model that emphasizes the natural differences between different classes of space infrastructure systems with respect to their place in the wider system-of-systems. Such a vision is a first step towards modelling the dependence of critical infrastructures on space systems in an environment beset by new challenges, such as natural and artificial threat phenomena, as well as jurisdictional and other governance issues.