Kevin Quigley received Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funding to examine critical infrastructure protection (CIP) in four countries. The project focused on (i) the management of CIP and its interdependencies and (ii) the contextual issues that influence its management in three sectors in particular, agriculture, transportation and water and dangerous chemicals.

We conducted 55 interviews with people with responsibility for critical infrastructure in transport, agriculture and manufacturing (dangerous chemicals), respectively. Interview subjects included regulators and representatives from industry. We have over 500 pages of transcript. We started the analysis of these transcripts this past summer. The work has created considerable opportunity for research students. We have published one major academic paper. We expect to generate more publications in the coming two years.

We have developed a media database that contains analysis of approximately 2,000 newspaper articles from the NY Times, the Globe and Mail, the Australian and the Daily Telegraph. Events examined include:

  • natural disasters,
  • industrial failures,
  • pandemics,
  • cyber incidents,
  • and terrorist plots.