A Taxonomy of Essential Services

Communities, countries and alliances cannot be efficient in preparing to meet diverse threats to their securitywithin 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 thecomprehensive approach is gaining traction in ever more security fields. The implementation of the comprehensiveapproach poses a number of methodological challenges. While it clearly requires coordination of variouscapabilities of a multitude of actors, it is less apparent which is the suitable organising concept. This papertakes as a starting point the concept of ‘essential services’ and suggests a taxonomy, that would allow totreat threats, vulnerabilities and risk in a common comprehensive framework. The taxonomy has been developedwith a specific purpose in mind, and thus refers to European Essential Services (EES). We neverthelessreason that it can be replicated to support decision making at other levels, e.g. in national security policy makingand planning.