Critical infrastructure and cascading effects are analyzed in this article as cross‐cutting topics in flood risk and resilience. A concept is developed for integrating aspects of disaster risk, hazard, vulnerability and resilience with critical infrastructure analytic components such as redundancy, rapidity or resourcefulness. These components are expressed for each phase of an unfolding flood event and cascading effects are indicated, too. This contribution discusses the implications of such a conceptual frame for the advancement of existing flood risk management concepts. Current international guiding strategies such as the United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the “Making Cities Resilient” campaigns in field of urban disaster resilience, Climate Change Adaptation processes such as the Paris Agreement of the IPCC process, or urban planning in the field of UN HABITAT are all interconnected to the topic of (critical) infrastructure. The article shows how flood risk management can connect to such wider international developments by the conceptual frame discussion presented.