ABSTRACT: Many of society’s critical infrastructures have become increasingly interconnected. At the same time they have also faced a substantial institutional fragmentation. These trends are clearly visible in the Swedish railway system. While previous research has shown that many critical infrastructures, despite significant reorganisations, operate at a remarkable high reliability, this paper highlights the negative effects of increased institutional fragmentation once these types of critical infrastructures do break down. More specificaly, the paper shows that the strive towards increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness within each organisation involved in the recovery operations following infrastructure breakdowns in the Swedish railway system also creates an overall more complex and time-consuming recovery of the functioning of the system as a whole. In this sense, each organisation achieves local success in terms of increased efficiency, but also contributes to global failure in the terms of problems of sustaining and quickly restoring railway operations.
Local success but global failure?
I artikeln "Local Success, Global Failure: Challenges Facing the Recovery Operations of Critical Infrastructure Breakdowns" diskuterar CenCIP-forskare problemet med att även om hanteringen av en störning i en samhällsviktig funktion uppfattas som framgångsrik av de aktörer som varit direkt involverade (local success), kan den sett från ett bredare systemperspektiv ändå betraktas som ett misslyckande (global failure).