Risk assessment plays a vital role in protecting our nation's critical infrastructure. Traditionally, such assessments have been conducted as a singular activity confined to the boarders of a particular asset or utility with little external sharing of information. In contrast other domains, e.g., disaster preparedness, cyber security, food-borne hazards, have demonstrated the benefits of sharing data, experiences and lessons learned in assessing and managing risk. Here we explore the concept of a Shared Risk Framework (SRF) in the context of critical infrastructure assessments. In this exploration, key elements of an SRF are introduced and initial instantiations demonstrated by way of three water utility assessments. Results from these three demonstrations were then combined with results from four other risk assessments developed using a different risk assessment application by a different set of analysts. Through this comparison we were able to explore potential challenges and benefits from implementation of a SRF. Challenges included both the capacity and interest of local utilities to conduct a shared risk assessment; particularly, wide scale adoption of any SRF will require a clear demonstration that such an effort supports the basic mission of the utility, adds benefit to the utility, and protects utility data from unintended access or misuse. In terms of benefits, anonymous sharing of results among utilities could provide the added benefits of recognizing and correcting bias; identifying ‘unknown, unknowns’; assisting self-assessment and benchmarking for the local utility; and providing a basis for treating shared assets and/or threats across multiple utilities.

风险评估在保护我们国家的关键基础设施中起着至关重要的作用。传统上，这种评估是作为一种单独的活动进行的，仅限于特定资产或公用事业的边界，几乎没有外部信息共享。相反，其他领域，例如备灾，网络安全，食源性灾害，在评估和管理风险方面展示了共享数据，经验教训的好处。在这里，我们在关键基础架构评估的背景下探讨了共享风险框架（SRF）的概念。在本次探索中，介绍了SRF的关键要素，并通过三个自来水评估评估了初始实例。然后，将这三个演示的结果与其他四个分析师使用不同的风险评估应用程序开发的其他四个风险评估的结果相结合。通过比较，我们能够探索实施SRF的潜在挑战和收益。挑战包括地方公用事业进行共同风险评估的能力和兴趣；特别是，任何SRF的大规模采用都需要清楚地表明，这种努力支持公用事业的基本使命，为公用事业增添了收益，并保护公用事业数据免遭意外访问或滥用。在收益方面，公用事业之间匿名分享结果可以提供认识和纠正偏见的额外好处；识别“未知，未知”；协助当地公用事业的自我评估和基准确定；并为处理跨多个公用事业的共享资产和/或威胁提供基础。