"Some networks are more crisis-resilient than others"

© 2020 EPFL - Matthias Finger, an EPFL professor of network industry management, does not foresee water and power supply problems in Switzerland, even with the country in lockdown. But internet access could prove more challenging. What about transport and water supply? A similar model applies to rail infrastructure. The Swiss government is investing heavily in expanding the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) network. But there have been problems on the maintenance side in recent years, with the necessary work lagging behind owing to regulatory gaps and, to a lesser extent, poor management. Assessing the condition of the water supply infrastructure is much harder because the pipes and systems are often old and managed independently by local authorities. We don't have a national picture of network health and, perhaps more importantly, there's no national regulator.