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Related Publications
COMPASS
White Paper Series: Assessing Resiliency in the U.S. National Energy
Infrastructure (WPS 2008-02) Authors: Jason Holfman and Roshanak Nilchiani
Resilience is an inherent ability of a
system to absorb a significant negative change and recover then recover to
an acceptable service level.
Resilience is therefore a function of a system’s vulnerabilities and
its ability to adapt. This paper
assesses the resiliency of the United States national energy infrastructure
when faced with natural and man-made disasters. Threats and vulnerabilities of petroleum
infrastructure and availability are examined using case studies of
petroleum infrastructure in and along the Gulf of Mexico, with emphasis on the
impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Case studies of cascading power failures affecting the national
electrical grid either initiated or propagated by man-made errors are also
investigated and solutions for more resilient strategies are proposed. Event
tree analysis is used to perform a risk assessment of the natural and
man-made disasters as they impact national energy infrastructure. Areas of potential resilience will be
proposed and examined paying particular attention to those areas that can
be readily implemented.
Contact Us
Dr. Ali Mostashari
Director,
COMPASS and Associate Professor (Research)
School
of Systems and Enterprises
Stevens
Institute of Technology
619
Babbio Building, Castle Point on the Hudson
Hoboken,
NJ 07030
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Introduction
to Infrastructure Resilience and Sustainability
Natural
and human-made disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 terrorist
attacks have highlighted the importance of resilience in critical
infrastructure systems. In addition to direct humanitarian and financial
losses as a result of such events, there are also indirect losses that
occur as a result of the increasing
interconnectedness of critical infrastructure, as well as the
psychological effects of an inadequate response of the system vis-ŕ-vis
such disasters. It is intuitive that minimizing the recovery time for such
systems is key to minimizing the potential losses associated with
catastrophic events. Ensuring resiliency in the nation's critical
infrastructure against the adverse effects of natural and man-made
disasters requires organizational agility and leadership as well as
flexible design and operation of physical infrastructures. In recent years,
while much focus has been put on the former, there has been little
attention paid to the latter.
The Infrastructure
Resilience Research at Stevens Institute of Technology focuses on
identifying resiliency leverage points for existing and emerging
infrastructure projects through integration of flexibility, adaptability,
robustness and agility in infrastructure systems design and operations. The
goal of the research is to map out types of service disruption and analyze
the cost of creating additional resilience in infrastructure systems using
options analysis and discrete events modeling. Particular focus is given on
networked infrastructure such as transportation systems (air, ground,
maritime), energy systems and Information and Telecommunications
infrastructure.
What is
Resilience?
Resilience
is an inherent ability of a system to sustain or rapidly recover its core
value delivery in the face of change. System resilience is therefore a
function of a system’s vulnerabilities and its adaptive capacity.
System
Resilience as a function of vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities
The
Architecture of Resilience
As
indicated the resilience of a system depends on its vulnerability vis-ŕ-vis
external radical changes and its adaptive capacity in dealing with such
drastic changes. How vulnerable a system is depends on its organizational
and physical infrastructure as well as the risk culture governing its
management and design. The adaptive capacity depends heavily on the organizational
infrastructure and the physical infrastructures, but can also depend on the
degree of proactive or reactive focus on risk management practices as well
as prevention versus recovery focus of the management and operation
culture.
a)
Vulnerability
·
The likelihood of individual
link or node failure
·
Criticality of individual
link or node performance
b)
Adaptive
Capacity
·
Capacity to apply existing
responses to problems
·
Capacity to generate and
apply innovative responses to new problems
Two
Major Strategies for Increasing the Resilience in Systems
v Reducing system vulnerabilities
v Increasing system’s adaptive capacity
Critical Infrastructure Resilience
Critical
infrastructure is crucial to the daily sustainability of our modern
societies. Disruptions in the availability and/or operations of critical
infrastructure systems can result in significant loss of human lives and
financial resources. Critical
infrastructure can be divided into four major groups based on their
functions and the types and scale of losses that can occur in case of
service disruption. These include:
Industrial infrastructure, services infrastructure, public safety and law
enforcement infrastructure and the public health and survival infrastructure.
These four categories are highly interlinked and a failure in one can
potentially lead to cascading failures in others. For instance in case the
transportation links to Manhattan (tunnels, ferries etc.) are disrupted,
there is the possibility that food supply infrastructures (stores,
groceries etc.) will be prone to disruption (and/or the target of plunder
as seen in new Orleans in the wake of Katrina) as well.
Recent Examples of Critical
Infrastructure Breakdowns
• Hurricane Katrina (Impact on all four categories
for one metropolitan area)
• 9/11 (Impact on Transportation and emergency
services)
• 2006 Blizzard in the
Mid-West (energy and transportation)
• Airport terror threats in the UK (transportation)
• Pakistan 2007 Earthquake (all four categories)
• Asian Tsunami (all
four categories)
• Minnesota Bridge
collapse (transportation)
• California heat wave
August 2007 (energy)
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