Managing infrastructure can be a difficult task to accomplish, seeing as there are so many routes to go about it by and types of risk can vary so greatly. I talked a bit about the different types of countermeasures in last week’s discussion: high-, low-, and no-tech categories of countermeasures. They all have their different attributes that make them more appropriate and compatible with certain types of risk over other types. Of these, however, a no-tech countermeasure is probably the most appropriate for battling the risk of neglect.

One of our readings from this week talks about our country’s electrical infrastructure and its age. In this example, a no-tech countermeasure would be the plans, policy, and guidance in place to address aging infrastructure and the methods for replacing or upgrading it to prevent failure due to age. This would also include addressing the financial needs. The reading estimates that it would cost nearly $5 trillion to replace our electrical infrastructure. Part of an effective countermeasure would be to address how exactly this would be paid for. I know that this would primarily fall in the hands of policymakers, so the time it would take to get something like this approved and signed would also need to be considered in the countermeasure. After that, the time it would take to allocate all the necessary resources (ie building supplies, materials, equipment, construction teams, contractors, etc.), building planning, and actual construction time would all need to be added into the countermeasure plan (or estimated anyway) in order to properly attempt to mitigate this.

Age is inevitable, so it must be planned for, as are many other types of risk that are inevitable. Accounting for these things is just another part of managing risk, and that is what can make it so difficult, there is some unpredictability in these types of risk that managing the threat of it is a task in itself. How can you plan for the unknown?