Resilient National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications: Service Metrics

Resilient communications are critically important in the event of a national security crisis or disaster. In the event of a significant threat to public safety, communications for national security and emergency preparedness must continue to provide an acceptable level of service for senior leader decision makers and first responders. If primary communications are lost, then resiliency is the ability for rapid and effective reconstitution or utilization of alternate means. This paper introduces concepts of communications resilience and suggests appropriate service metrics. The concepts of survivability, tolerance, flexibility, and capacity are used to define system tolerance, system flexibility, and system capacity.