Utilities, including electricity, gas, nuclear power and water treatment, are the most critical industries in the world according to a new ranking from Vertiv, formerly Emerson Network Power. Vertiv convened a panel of global critical infrastructure experts to systematically quantify and rank the criticality of multiple industries based on 15 criteria. Mass transit—specifically rail and air transportation—ranked second on the list, followed by telecommunications, upstream oil and gas activity and cloud and colocation.
The panel set criteria encompassing the range of potential impacts from the loss of availability of critical systems and weighted them based on the severity of the impact. These criteria then were used to create a criticality rubric the panel used to score the industries, which then were ranked by their average scores.