Henrik Hassel

Knowledge about the nature, processes and patterns of cascading effects, i.e. where infrastruc-ture dependencies lead to impacts propagating from one system to other systems, is essential in order to miti-gate and respond to crises that involve critical infrastructures and societal functions. This paper presents a method for systematic description of cascading effects in past event, to some extent currently lacking in the scientific literature. The purpose is to enable systematic descriptions of key characteristics of cascading effects from existing empirical data of past events, i.e. written material in terms of official reports, investigations, or media reports. The method is applied on 16 past events in order to test its applicability. Initial analyses and potential uses of the collected data are discussed with respect to gaining deeper empirical insight of cascading effects, which can be useful for decision-making and support modelling and simulations efforts in the area of critical infrastructure protection.