Overview
ISO 22372:2025 - Security and resilience - Community resilience - Guidelines for infrastructure resilience provides comprehensive guidance for establishing, maintaining, monitoring and improving the resilience of infrastructure that delivers essential services. Intended for organizations of all sizes and sectors, the standard supports collaborative decision‑making across public, private and community stakeholders to ensure continuity, robustness and adaptability of critical infrastructure systems.
Keywords: ISO 22372:2025, infrastructure resilience, community resilience, guidelines, stakeholder engagement, continuity of essential services
Key topics and technical requirements
ISO 22372:2025 structures guidance around a practical framework and operational processes. Major elements include:
- Framework and governance
- Roles, responsibilities and accountabilities for infrastructure resilience
- Example governance models to coordinate multiple stakeholders
- Principles for resilient infrastructure
- Six guiding principles: clearly defined accountabilities, proactive protection, environmental integration, social engagement, adaptive transformation, and continual learning
- Risk-informed planning (Plan)
- Identifying and assessing capabilities and vulnerabilities
- Setting priorities and establishing strategies and long‑term plans
- Sharing hazard, risk and return information to inform investment decisions
- Design and implementation (Do)
- Designing to fail safely, consider system interdependencies and multiple scales
- Use of nature‑based and environmentally sustainable solutions
- Embedding emergency management, multiple resilience pathways and redundancy
- Testing and monitoring (Check)
- Stress testing components and systems, performance monitoring and reporting
- Analysing incidents, near misses and lessons learned to drive improvements
- Continuous improvement and maintenance (Act)
- Condition‑based maintenance, post‑incident inspection, competency development
- Public engagement, preparedness and flexible management approaches
The standard adopts a Plan‑Do‑Check‑Act lifecycle to help organizations implement, test and refine resilience measures.
Practical applications and who would use this standard
ISO 22372:2025 is practical for groups involved in planning, operating or regulating infrastructure, including:
- Infrastructure owners and operators (transport, utilities, communications)
- Urban planners and municipal authorities
- Emergency managers and continuity planners
- Asset managers and maintenance teams
- Policy makers, funders and donors involved in resilience investments
- Professional associations, consultants and community organizations
Use cases include resilience strategy development, cross‑sector governance design, investment prioritization, design standards for critical components, stress testing and establishing monitoring/maintenance programs.
Related standards
ISO 22372:2025 complements other security and resilience standards and guidance (for example, ISO standards addressing business continuity and emergency management) and should be used alongside sector‑specific technical standards and national regulations when developing infrastructure resilience programs.