Critical Infrastructures, Key Resources, and Key Assets

This introductory chapter articulates the topics of critical infrastructure, key resources, and key assets (CIKRKA). It offers the reader a clear definition of the notions, explain their relevance and also the need to develop intelligible and robust models to diagnose and predict risks, vulnerability, resilience, fragility, and perception. This chapter reveals space, undersea, and belowground as three privileged sectors of human endeavor were critical infrastructures, resources, and assets coexist in the guise of complex systems that tend to assume a leading position in the overall, global CIKRKA system of systems. This chapter sets the stage for the remainder of the book.