A new study from Vertiv, formerly Emerson Network Power, has found that utilities, including electricity, gas, nuclear power, and water treatment, are the world’s most critical industries.

Vertiv assembled a group of international experts in critical infrastructure to develop a system for quantifying and ranking the criticality of various industries based on 15 criteria. Public transportation, particularly rail and air travel, came in second place, followed by telecommunications, upstream oil and gas operations, and cloud and colocation services. The complete list is included in a new report, Ranking the World’s Most Critical Industries, which was released today.

Source: Vertiv website.

The panel established standards that took into account the range of effects that could result from critical system outages, weighting each one according to the severity of its effects. Using these criteria, a criticality rubric was created, which the panel then used to grade the industries before ranking them according to their average scores.

“The interconnectedness of these industries is a recurring theme at the top of this list,” said Jack Pouchet, Vertiv’s vice president of market development. “These industries are essential to the functioning of modern society, and downtime in any of them can have ripple effects across industries and across the globe. As our planet becomes increasingly mobile and connected, and as the Internet of Things (IoT) develops, this trend will only worsen.”

Clean energy and water are essential requirements in a developed society and form the foundation of the majority of other industries and services, making utilities the obvious top pick for the most important industry. The panel ranked mass transit as the second most important industry, citing not only the safety of passengers but also the significant effects that delays and disruptions can have on numerous businesses, markets, and the entire world. The importance of communications and connectivity in daily life, in business, and in times of crisis is reflected in telecommunications’ third-place ranking.

In terms of the monetary effects of unplanned downtime, financial services came in first. The second and third industries were e-commerce and cloud and colocation, respectively. Due to the increased reliance on cloud and colocation platforms across numerous industries, they also ranked fifth overall on the list of the most important sectors. Cloud and colocation were also recognized by the panel as one of several rapidly developing industries that are becoming more and more important.

“The expansion of cloud and colocation is accelerating,” said Tony Gaunt, a panelist and senior director for colocation, cloud, banking, financial services, and insurance at Vertiv Asia. “We are just at the beginning of the adoption curve for core industries moving to the cloud, and it is likely that future mission-critical services – the IoT networks that support smart cities and manufacturing, for example – will be born in the cloud.”

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