Important Terms and Definitions

Before getting started with CAMS, ensure that you understand the following terms and definitions:

Critical asset – any structure, assembly or feature which, if damaged, lost, or destroyed, would reduce the resilience of a community (a city, state, island, etc.) during or after a disaster. Examples of critical assets can be found in the best practices section.

Failure chain – a representation of the relationship between critical assets where, if one asset fails, it has an impact on the operation of an asset further downstream.

Cascading failure chains – a representation of how the failure of one critical asset failing can affect multiple assets beyond those in its immediate failure chain(s).

Event – a disaster such as a hurricane, flood or derecho that could damage or destroy critical assets.

Owner – the entity or person(s) in charge of a particular critical asset.