Infrastructures have become more and more critical to the functioning of society, as economic and social processes to a large extent rely on the services provided by such systems. Failure of these infrastructures, therefore, is one of the most important vulnerabilities of modern society. In addition and simultaneously much change is taking place within and around these infrastructures. This change includes: increasingly rapid technological change, rapid institutional change, increasing system complexity, increasing trans-boundary dependencies, tensions between market concerns addressing (short-term) economic gains, and increasing demands on service quality. These and other changes pose formidable challenges to policy makers, business innovators, system designers, infrastructure operators and scientists alike.

Critical Infrastructures: State of the Art in Research and Application, comprising a selection of reviewed and edited contributions from all over the world, aims to shed light on the various aspects of critical infrastructures. The editors of this book have opted for a broad view on the various criticality aspects on infrastructures itself as well as contributions that discuss the institutional and technical environment of critical infrastructures which are crucial for their proper functioning.

Critical Infrastructures brings to light a number of eye-opening critical issues that have been only marginally touched upon in research and practice. Hence, the book is an indispensable resource for infrastructure policy makers, managers, consultants and researchers alike.
The book is divided into four sections:
*Vulnerability and Risk;
*System Development and Adaptation;
*Institutional Change;
*Capacity Management.

Traditional policy analysis approaches are characterized by a focus on system modeling and choosing among policy alternatives. While successful in many cases, this approach has been increasingly criticized for being technocratic and ignoring the behavioral and political dimensions of most policy processes. In recent decades, increased awareness of the multi-actor, multiple perspective, and poly-centric character of many policy processes has led to the development of a variety of different perspectives on the styles and roles of policy analysis, and to new analytical tools and approaches for example, argumentative approaches, participative policy analysis, and negotiation support. As a result, the field has become multi-faceted and somewhat fragmented.

"Public Policy Analysis: New Developments "acknowledges the variety of approaches and provides a synthesis of the traditional and new approaches to policy analysis. It provides an overview and typology of different types of policy analytic activities, characterizing them according to differences in character and leading values, and linking them to a variety of theoretical notions on policymaking. Thereby, it provides assistance to both end users and analysts in choosing an appropriate approach given a specific policy situation. By broadening the traditional approach and methods to include the analysis of actors and actor networks related to the policy issue at hand, it deepens the state of the art in certain areas. While the main focus of the book is on the cognitive dimensions of policy analysis, it also links the policy analysis process to the policymaking process, showing how to identify and involve all relevant stakeholders in the process, and how to create favorable conditions for use of the results of policy analytic efforts by the policy actors.

The book has as its major objective to describe the state-of-the-art and the latest developments in "ex-ante" policy analysis. It is divided into two parts. Part I explores and structures policy analysis developments, the development and description of approaches to diagnose policy situations, design policy analytic efforts, and policy process conditions. Part II focuses on recent developments regarding models and modeling for policy analysis, placing modeling approaches in the context of the variety of conditions and approaches elaborated in Part I. "

Traditional policy analysis approaches are characterized by a focus on system modeling and choosing among policy alternatives. While successful in many cases, this approach has been increasingly criticized for being technocratic and ignoring the behavioral and political dimensions of most policy processes. In recent decades, increased awareness of the multi-actor, multiple perspective, and poly-centric character of many policy processes has led to the development of a variety of different perspectives on the styles and roles of policy analysis, and to new analytical tools and approaches - for example, argumentative approaches, participative policy analysis, and negotiation support. As a result, the field has become multi-faceted and somewhat fragmented. Public Policy Analysis: New Developments acknowledges the variety of approaches and provides a synthesis of the traditional and new approaches to policy analysis. It provides an overview and typology of different types of policy analytic activities, characterizing them according to differences in character and leading values, and linking them to a variety of theoretical notions on policymaking. Thereby, it provides assistance to both end users and analysts in choosing an appropriate approach given a specific policy situation. By broadening the traditional approach and methods to include the analysis of actors and actor networks related to the policy issue at hand, it deepens the state of the art in certain areas. While the main focus of the book is on the cognitive dimensions of policy analysis, it also links the policy analysis process to the policymaking process, showing how to identify and involve all relevant stakeholders in the process, and how to create favorable conditions for use of the results of policy analytic efforts by the policy actors. The book has as its major objective to describe the state-of-the-art and the latest developments in ex-ante policy analysis. It is divided into two parts. Part I explores and structures policy analysis developments, the development and description of approaches to diagnose policy situations, design policy analytic efforts, and policy process conditions. Part II focuses on recent developments regarding models and modeling for policy analysis, placing modeling approaches in the context of the variety of conditions and approaches elaborated in Part I.

Critical Infrastructures: State of the Art in Research and Application, comprising a selection of reviewed and edited contributions from all over the world, aims to shed light on the various aspects of critical infrastructures. The editors of this book have opted for a broad view on the various criticality aspects on infrastructures itself as well as contributions that discuss the institutional and technical environment of critical infrastructures which are crucial for their proper functioning. Critical Infrastructures brings to light a number of eye-opening critical issues that have been only marginally touched upon in research and practice. Hence, the book is an indispensable resource for infrastructure policy makers, managers, consultants and researchers alike. The book is divided into four sections: *Vulnerability and Risk; *System Development and Adaptation; *Institutional Change; *Capacity Management.