Critical Infrastructure Community

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) developed the Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework (IRPF) to provide an approach for localities, regions, and the private sector to work together to plan for the security and resilience of critical infrastructure services in the face of multiple threats and changes. The primary audience for the IRPF is state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and associated regional organizations; however, the IRPF can be flexibly used by any organization seeking to enhance their resilience planning. In many ways, the IRPF complements and supplements other planning activities such as National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Community Resilience Planning Guide (CRPG). It provides tools and resources for integrating critical infrastructure into planning as well as a framework for working regionally and across systems and jurisdictions.

The IRPF is not a definitive roadmap, but rather a flexible set of guidance documents, tools, and resources to kickstart infrastructure security and resilience planning and incorporate it into existing planning mechanisms. While the IRPF is structured as a set of sequential steps, the user can choose which steps and sets of resources to more fully consider infrastructure in any existing or on-going planning process. Communities can review the framework to determine where they are in the planning spectrum and choose the guidance and tools that best serve their needs. Communities with limited time and resources may want to focus on the infrastructure sectors that support critical functions, such as energy, communications, transportation, and water and wastewater systems initially, with the potential to expand later. Conversely, communities with more time and resources could consider all other critical infrastructure sectors deemed important and/or vital to the continued performance of key social and economic functions integral to the community or regional prosperity