A Taxonomy of Essential Services

Abstract

Communities, countries and alliances cannot be efficient in preparing to meet diverse threats to their security
within traditional organizational stovepipes. The boundaries between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ threats are getting fuzzier, and the vulnerabilities of governments, businesses and communities feed on each other, while the
comprehensive approach is gaining traction in ever more security fields. The implementation of the comprehensive
approach poses a number of methodological challenges. While it clearly requires coordination of various
capabilities of a multitude of actors, it is less apparent which is the suitable organising concept. This paper
takes as a starting point the concept of ‘essential services’ and suggests a taxonomy, that would allow to
treat threats, vulnerabilities and risk in a common comprehensive framework. The taxonomy has been developed
with a specific purpose in mind, and thus refers to European Essential Services (EES). We nevertheless
reason that it can be replicated to support decision making at other levels, e.g. in national security policy making
and planning.