Infrastructure protection and population response to infrastructure failure

Preston, John and Chadderton, Charlotte (2018). Infrastructure protection and population response to infrastructure failure. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852136

The 'National Infrastructure' is seldom out of the news. Although the infrastructure is not always easy to define it includes things such as utilities (water, energy, gas), transportation systems and communications. We often hear about real or perceived threats to the infrastructure.

In this research we will construct 'timelines' of infrastructure protection policy and mass population response to see exactly how and why policy changes in countries over time. We will select a range of countries to represent different political and social factors (US, UK, New Zealand, Japan and Germany).

The analysis of these timelines will suggest why national infrastructure policy changes over time. We will then test our results using case studies of actual disasters and expert groups of policy makers across countries. Ultimately this will help us to understand national infrastructure protection changes over time, what drives such changes and the different ways in which countries prepare themselves for infrastructure threats.

In addition, through a series of 'leadership activities' the research will bring together researchers in different academic disciplines and people from the public, private and third sectors.

Data description (abstract)

This comparative project (UK, Japan, Germany, US & New Zealand) examined how governments prepare citizens for collapse in the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI); how they model collapse and population response; case studies of CNI collapse (with particular reference to health and education) and the globalisation of CNI policy. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under grant reference ES/K000233/1. It considered:-
1. How is the critical infrastructure defined and operationalised in different national contexts? How is population response defined, modelled and refined in the light of crisis?
2. What are the most important comparative differences between countries with regard to differences in mass population response to critical infrastructure collapse?
3. To what degree are factors such as differences in national levels of trust, degrees of educational or income inequality, social capital or welfare system differences particularly in the education and health systems significant in understanding differential population response to critical infrastructure collapse?
4. How can a comparative understanding of mass population response to critical infrastructure collapse help us to prepare for future crisis?
Research design and methodology

Methodologically the study was focused on national systems in developed countries. The focus was on different 'welfare regimes' being broadly liberal market economies (the UK, US and New Zealand) and broadly centralised market economies (Germany and Japan). The data arising from the project was of various types including interviews, focus groups, archival data and documentary evidence.

Data creators: