Policymaking For Critical Infrastructure—A Case Study On Strategic Interventions In Public Safety Telecommunications

In order to provide a new perspective on policymaking for critical infrastructure, Gow (London School of Economics and Political Science) weaves together developments in disaster management with an approach known as Constructive Technology Assessment. He argues that well-founded public policy must be based on an understanding of the social roots of risk and vulnerability in large technical systems, and that this understanding must come from studying how these systems grow and change as socio-technical entities. In particular, he asks what the impact of a national disaster mitigation strategy would have on the telecommunications infrastructure, and how the public information infrastructure might be drawn on to actively promote the objectives of such an initiative. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)