Identification and Analysis of Inter- and Intraorganizational Interdependencies in Municipal Administrations

Abstract

Municipal administrations play a central role in crisis management in the German federal state, yet existing approaches to critical infrastructure (CI) interdependency analysis are not tailored to their organizational structures and decision‑making processes. This paper presents the conceptual design of a scalable method for identifying and analysing inter‑ and intraorganizational dependencies within municipal administrations. Building on principles of Graph Data Science, the method combines a structured data model with a tailored data‑collection approach that captures task‑level dependencies, resource requirements, external actors and geographical relations. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through a pre-test conducted in two German municipalities, using both simple directed and bipartite graph representations to explore patterns of interconnectedness and task‑level heterogeneity. The results highlight the value of fine‑grained dependency modelling as a basis for subsequent analytical steps. The method is intended to support future network‑based assessments and simulation‑based analyses aimed at strengthening municipal resilience and crisis preparedness.