Framework for Operational Resilience Management of Critical Infrastructures and Organizations

Abstract

Progressing digitalization and networking of systems and organizations representing Critical Infrastructures opens promising new potentials and opportunities, which on the downside, are accompanied by rising complexity and increasingly opaque interdependencies. The consequently increasing lack of knowledge leads to uncertainties affecting risk assessment and decision-making in case of adverse events. This trend motivated recent discussions and developments in risk science, emphasizing the need to handle such uncertainties. Complementarily, research in the resilience domain focuses on system capabilities to handle surprising hazardous situations. Several frameworks presented in the literature aim at combining both perspectives but either lack the focus on operational management, have a rather theoretical approach, or are designed for specific applications. Based on this observation, we propose an approach that integrates resilience management into the actual operation of Critical Infrastructure Systems and Organizations by providing an operational process that coordinates the fundamental resilience capabilities of responding, monitoring, anticipation, and learning. Furthermore, we tackle the challenge of uncertainties resulting from a lack of knowledge by aligning the concepts of digital twin and resilience management. The proposed framework is extensively discussed, and required processes are presented in detail. Eventually, its applicability and potential are reviewed by means of a complex hazardous situation at a Bavarian district heating power plant.

Old Wine in New Bottles? Understanding Infrastructure Resilience: Foundations, Assessment, and Limitations

“…Table 5 shows a brief literature investigation conducted to check the maturity level of existing digital twin development in infrastructure resilience management. Of the final 16 papers shortlisted, 3 papers provided a general introduction (with 1-2 paragraphs) on the potential of applying digital twins to infrastructure resilience management (Argyroudis et al, 2022;Kaewunruen et al, 2022;Ivanov and Dolgui, 2019); 7 papers designed a conceptual framework for integrating digital twins to infrastructure resilience management (Brucherseifer et al, 2021;Salvi et al, 2022;Lichte et al, 2022;Flammini, 2021;Bellini et al, 2021;Patriarca et al, 2022;de Farias et al, 2022) and 1 paper further designed a prototype (Rivera et al, 2021); 1 review paper concluded that there was considerable unexplored potential for digital twins applications in the rail and road sectors (Vieira et al, 2022); and only 4 relatively recent papers (albeit not in the transport field) integrated digital twins into resilience assessment, where digital twins were used to integrate modelling and simulation tools (Epiphaniou et al, 2023;Patriarca et al, 2022;Zhou et al, 2021;dos Santos Alvim et al, 2022). These results indicate that the application of digital twins in infrastructure resilience management is still in its infancy and is currently largely in the theoretical stage of designing conceptual frameworks.…”

A Probabilistic Approach to Dynamic Risk Scenario Identification

“…According to Gausemeier et al (1998), a scenario is defined as "a generally intelligible description of a possible situation in the future, based on a complex network of influence-factors". Scenario analyses are applied in several fields, such as threat analysis (Lichte et al, 2020;Witte et al, 2020;Conrado and de Oude, 2014), risk analysis (López-Silva et al, 2015), resilience management (Lichte et al, 2022), and also in emergency management (Comes et al, 2012;Schätter, 2014).…”

Optimizing Observation Strategy in Emergency Response by Combining Bayesian Network and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

“…Securing critical infrastructures in case of sudden disruptions is crucial to ensure the supply of goods and services that provide stability in our society (Lichte et al, 2022). When critical infrastructures face threats or disruptions, autonomous systems, such as robots or drones, may be employed not only to monitor the correct function of the infrastructure but also to intervene in case of an emergency (Milana, 2022).…”