Natural Hazards, Critical Infrastructure Systems, and Resilience Enhancement: A Structured State-of-the-Art Review and a Synthesis-Based Rapid Assessment Framework
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Critical infrastructure systems (CISs) are increasingly exposed to natural hazards whose impacts are amplified by infrastructure interdependence, urban complexity, and the growing prevalence of compound and cascading events. Existing research provides valuable insights into individual hazards, infrastructure components, modeling methods, and resilience metrics, but these insights remain difficult to translate into preliminary decision support because they are organized across different hazard types, sectors, analytical scales, and decision contexts. This article presents a structured state-of-the-art review of natural hazards, CIS impacts, and resilience enhancement. A two-pathway review strategy was adopted. A Web of Science (WoS) core search was used to characterize the bibliometric landscape and identify WoS-sourced core synthesis studies, while a targeted anchor-search pathway was used to verify foundational concepts, hazard mechanisms, methodological approaches, resilience frameworks, and authoritative institutional sources. The review clarifies the conceptual distinction among dependencies, interdependencies, compound hazards, cascading failures, service disruption, and resilience; synthesizes cross-hazard infrastructure impact mechanisms; compares major method families for hazard-impact and resilience assessment; and develops a synthesis-derived rapid resilience assessment framework for preliminary screening and prioritization under constrained data and time conditions. The synthesis indicates that future CIS resilience assessment would benefit from moving beyond isolated asset-damage analysis toward integrated workflows that link hazard loading, component vulnerability, network functionality, service consequences, recovery capacity, uncertainty, and feasible intervention choices. The article contributes a more transparent evidence-source structure, an evidence-to-decision bridge, and a bounded decision-oriented framework for organizing future research and practical resilience screening.
Source: Natural Hazards Review
Authors: Xuejian Zhang, Li Sun, Le Chang, Zhen Sun
Language: English
Subfield: Civil and Structural Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221447770