This paper examines how the resilience of Ukraine’s railway system, Ukrzaliznytsia, has functioned as a source of ontological security following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Existing IR literature on ontological security has paid limited attention to the role of critical infrastructure, often treating material resilience and narrative meaning-making as analytically distinct. In contrast, I argue that critical infrastructure can ingeniously enable the generation of ontological security through the interaction of related socio-technical practices and autobiographical narratives that affirm the collective capacity to withstand major disruption. The paper identifies several interrelated mechanisms through which Ukrainian Railways has served as a platform for the production of ontological security. To trace how these mechanisms unfold across textual, visual, sonic, and material dimensions, I draw on a multi-modal narrative analysis of Ukrzaliznytsia-related media productions, art installations, social media discourse, and interviews with railway workers and passengers. The result reframes the relationship between critical infrastructure, ontological security, and resilience, demonstrating that security of the Self is found in adaptive processes rather than the consolidation of fixed identities or predefined end states.

Water is the lifeblood of human beings and society, but threats to water, such as the pollution of rivers, cyber crimes, and attacks against water infrastructure, are increasing. In green criminology, scholars have relied on domestic criminal law to develop the concept of crimes against water. This paper argues that international law could provide several frameworks for addressing these crimes. A number of international treaties and customary rules deal directly or indirectly with crimes against water, and the United Nations Security Council has also dealt with crimes against water committed by terrorist groups and parties to armed conflict. Crimes against water may represent violations not only of domestic criminal laws but also of international humanitarian law and human rights law.

Does exposure to cyber terrorism prompt calls for retaliatory military strikes? By what psychological mechanism does it do so? Through a series of controlled, randomized experiments, this study exposed respondents (n = 2,028) to television news reports depicting cyber and conventional terror attacks against critical infrastructures in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. The findings indicate that only lethal cyber terrorism triggers strong support for retaliation. Findings also confirm that anger bridges exposure to cyber terrorism and retaliation, rather than psychological mechanisms such as threat perception or anxiety as other studies propose. These findings extend to the cyber realm a recent trend that views anger as a primary mechanism linking exposure to terrorism with militant preferences. With cyber terrorism a mounting international concern, this study demonstrates how exposure to this threat can generate strong public support for retaliatory policies, depending on the lethality of the attack.

This article investigates the effects that attacks during armed conflict which damage water and wastewater services have on the outbreak and transmission of infectious disease. It employs a lens of uncertainty to assess the level of knowledge about the reverberations along this consequential chain and to discuss the relevance to military planning and targeting processes, and to the laws of armed conflict. It draws on data in policy reports and research from a wide variety of contexts, and evidence from protracted armed conflicts in Iraq, Yemen and Gaza. The review finds a strong base of evidence of the impact of attacks on water and wastewater services, and a high level of confidence in information about the transmission of infectious disease. One clear risk identified is when people are exposed to water supplies which are contaminated by untreated wastewater. Obtaining a similar level of confidence about the cause and effect along the full consequential chain is challenged by numerous compounding variables, though there are a number of patterns related to the duration of the armed conflict within which the attacks occur. As the conflict protracts, both the risk of the spread of infectious disease and the evidence base for gauging the reverberating effects becomes stronger, for example. The article concludes that the reverberating effects of damage from an attack can be foreseen in some contexts and can be expected to become more foreseeable over time. The analysis suggests that the most pragmatic path for military institutions and those involved in targeting operations to take this knowledge into account is through a “precautionary approach” which assumes the existence of the reverberating effects, and works them in to the standard information-gathering and planning processes.

With the uncertain physical and mental health implications of COVID-19 infection, companies have taken a myriad of actions that aim to reduce the risk of employees contracting the virus, with most grounded in reducing or eliminating in-person interactions. Our preliminary analysis indicates that while there is some data to support modelling absenteeism, there are gaps in the available evidence, requiring the use of assumptions that limit precision and efficacy for decision support. Improved data on time-to-recovery after hospitalization, absenteeism due to family or other household member illness, and mental health’s impact on returning to work will support the development of more robust absenteeism models and analytical approaches.

The rehabilitation of essential services infrastructure following hostilities, whether during a conflict or post-conflict, is a complex undertaking. This is made more complicated in protracted conflicts due to the continuing cycle of damage and expedient repair amid changing demands. The rehabilitation paradigm that was developed for the successful post-World War II rehabilitation of Germany and Japan has been less successful since. There are a myriad of conflicting interests that impede its application, yet the issue consistently comes down to a lack of systems-level understanding of the current situation on the ground and a lack of alignment between what is delivered and the actual local need. This article proposes a novel conceptual framework to address this, affording a greater “system of systems” understanding of the local essential services and how they can be restored to reflect the changed needs of the local population that has itself been changed by the conflict. The recommendations draw on heuristic practice and commercially available tools to provide a practicable approach to restoring infrastructure function in order to enable essential services that are resilient to temporary returns to violence and support the overall rehabilitation of the affected community.

Though described as the first milestone towards securing Canada’s critical infrastructure (CI), the 2009 National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure is the most recent effort in decades of federal engagement with the problem of how to secure the material elements that underpin state, economy, and society. In this article, we show how a little-known civil defence program initiated after WWII to protect important industrial facilities from military enemies has transformed in the contemporary period into the monitoring of a range of political and social movements as perceived dangers to what is understood today as CI. We view these changes as indicative of transformations in the exercise of police power through which the contemporary colonial-liberal order is enacted.

This article reviews the factors that determine the impact of explosive weapons on urban services in space and time, with a focus on drinking water services. The evidence comes from published and unpublished research and records, as well as experience restoring or maintaining such services. Urban services are seen as interconnected, and each composed of interdependent components of people, consumables and hardware. Elements that make up the components are labelled “upstream”, “midstream” and “downstream”, to reflect their location and hierarchy in the production and delivery of any urban service. The impact of explosive weapons is broken into the direct effects on any of the components of a service, and the reverberating effects on up- and or downstream components of the same service, or on other services. The effects are most commonly observed in service infrastructure, and determined chiefly by the extent of the damage to the functionality of any component. The spatial extent of the impact is found to be determined primarily by the hierarchy of the component suffering the direct impact, with attacks on upstream components being the furthest-reaching. The duration of the impact is determined primarily by the pre-explosion “baseline resilience” of the service, itself a function of system redundancies and emergency preparedness and response. The analysis suggests that the impact is more reasonably foreseeable than may commonly be thought, in the sense that the direct effects of explosives are well known and that the most important infrastructure is generally identifiable. It follows that proportionality assessments which involve urban services would benefit from (i) the direct and consistent engagement of specialized engineers within the targeting cell, and (ii) greater familiarity of the weapons controller with services, infrastructure and systems in urban areas.