The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has launched its Infrastructure Dependency Primer (IDP) learning tool, which aims to help state, local, tribal, and territorial planners and decisionmakers better understand how infrastructure dependencies can impact their communities and how to increase resilience.
The IDP is a supplement to CISA’s recently published Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework. Through videos, animations, interactive graphics, and guidance, the IDP educates stakeholders on “understanding critical infrastructure, identifying dependencies, and improving system resilience through planning,” according to CISA.
The IDP is broken into three learning sections:
- Learn: Essential community functions, enabling infrastructure systems, and infrastructure dependencies;
- Plan: Resilience, the role of infrastructure stakeholders in planning processes, and methods for incorporating dependencies into planning; and
- Implement: Actions for improving resilience, case study examples, and available resources.
The tool is available to everyone and is “meant to be independently explored by users based on their interests and needs,” according to CISA’s press release. No prior training or knowledge is needed for the IDP.
When users complete the IDP, CISA reminds them that learning, planning, and implementing “should not be a one-time process.”
“Due to changing conditions and circumstances, your plans and project solutions should be periodically evaluated, updated, and improved in order to remain relevant and effective in building resilience within your community,” CISA said.
