There are numerous frameworks for studying the governance of shared resources. The basic structure of these frameworks has been articulated many times in the literature. Although they have been applied to multiple cases, these applications are idiosyncratic, subject to the interpretation of the user, and raise concerns regarding the operational use of frameworks for case-study comparisons. As a result, insights from these studies do not live up to the aspirations of the frameworks to generate generalizable knowledge. Here, based on several case studies and our experience using various frameworks for analyzing social-ecological systems, we undertake the task of generating a verb list meant to qualify interactions

represented in the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework. This list is a first

step in laying the foundation for a general typology of and a standardized protocol for representing

dynamics of CISs.