Assessing Risk to the National Critical Functions as a Result of Climate Change

Abstract

Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad." EO 14008 describes the threat that the climate crisis poses to the United States and to the world and the roles of various federal agencies in addressing it. It directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to "consider the implications of climate change in the Arctic, along our Nation's borders, and to National Critical Functions" ( § 103[e]). The National Critical Functions (NCFs) represent "the functions of government and the private sector so vital to the United States that their disruption, corruption, or dysfunction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof" (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency [CISA], undated c, p. 1).To fulfill the objectives of the EO, CISA asked the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) to (1) develop a risk management framework for integrating climate-driven changes to the strategic operating environment, building on the NCF risk architecture to identify, understand, and manage climatedriven effects on the NCFs; 1 (2) identify the NCFs facing the greatest vulnerability to climate change and, as a result, facing disruption or degradation in the future; and (3) complete a full climate change risk assessment for the NCFs identified as being most vulnerable. This report describes these three activities, presenting the risk management framework as an ongoing capacity for assessing climate-related risk moving forward and highlighting the results of the climate risk assessment that identified NCFs at risk due to climate change. The findings should be of interest to CISA and other federal agencies and partners managing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure.This research was sponsored by CISA and conducted within the Strategy, Policy, and Operations Program of the HSOAC federally funded research and development center (FFRDC).For more information on HSOAC, see www.rand.org/hsoac. For more information on this publication, see www.rand.org/t/RRA1645-7.