Multicriteria decision support for business continuity planning in the event of critical infrastructure disruptions

Merz, Mirjam; Hiete, Michael; Bertsch, Valentin

doi:10.1504/ijcis.2009.022854

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In 2004, the first national crisis management exercise in Germany (LUEKEX) after the cold war was conducted. Together, with participants from administration, police and industry (power producers, manufacturing companies, telecommunication companies, retailers and German railway) crisis management staff of the Government on the Federal and Laender level practised in this administrative-strategic exercise the management of a long-lasting power outage (Merz et al, 2009). The scenario of the exercise was a winter-storm damaging power transmission and distribution lines which led to a power outage in large parts of the Laender Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria for several days.…”

Section: Ijdrbe 23mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Complex interdependencies between the CI often lead to cascading effects and interruption of other CI if one CI fails (Farrell et al, 2004;Mendonça and Wallace, 2006). As most other CI depend on electric power, power supply takes a key role among CI (Oh et al, 2010;Merz et al, 2009). Economic losses, both direct and indirect, from a power outage can be therefore extremely high (Rose et al, 2007;Farrell et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scenario‐based impact analysis of a power outage on healthcare facilities in Germany

Hiete

Merz

Schultmann

2011

International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment

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Purpose -Power outages which may be triggered, for example, by natural hazards and system failures are a common phenomenon, associated with large impacts on society including the healthcare sector. Minimising adverse impacts effectively requires an analysis of possible impacts and the identification of measures aiming at reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and assess the effects of a power average on the healthcare system in Germany and to identify possible preparation, mitigation and recovery (PMR) measures. Design/methodology/approach -To systematically identify impacts as well as PMR measures, a moderated workshop with participants representing different healthcare sub-sectors in Germany was conducted and complemented by semi-structured interviews and a thorough analysis of literature. Impacts were determined for three scenarios of power outage duration, ,8, 8-24 and . 24 hours. Findings -Whereas hospitals are in general well prepared with respect to shorter outages, due to obligatory emergency power in Germany, outpatient medical care, nursing homes (NH) and, in particular, home-care nursing are early affected. Failure of these sub-sectors puts additional strains on hospitals. If outages last more than one day and are associated with failure of other critical infrastructures (CIs), especially water supply, hospitals may be severely affected. Effective preparation and mitigation measures identified based on a facility-specific impact analysis, as well as good cooperation between actors, may reduce impacts. Originality/value -The largely case-study-based literature is complemented by a systematic and extensive analysis of direct and indirect impacts on the main healthcare sub-sectors in Germany, followed by an identification of specific PMR measures. As a novelty outage duration is explicitly accounted for. Also, interdependencies between the healthcare sub-sectors as well as dependencies on other CI are considered.

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Section: Ijdrbe 23mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scenario‐based impact analysis of a power outage on healthcare facilities in Germany

Hiete

Merz

Schultmann

2011

International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment

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“…Identifying and modeling these investment strategies is a major attribute in the modeling objective category. Merz et al [68] uses the Multi Attribute Value Theorem (MAVT) as part of the Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to evaluate potential Business Continuity Planning (BCP) programs. For example, improved reliability of a piece of equipment can be represented as reduced probability of entering a failure state in the link capacity of the Markov model.…”

Section: Modeling Objectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To model investment opportunities, Xu, et al [26] represents them as changes to the transition matrices in the Markov Model used to capture variations in capacity of links over time in network flow models. Through MAVT and MCDA, Merz et al [68] identified the best BCP given specific criteria. Considering the SCADA link S1 to DS1, a 20% reduction in the transition probability to enter the lowest failure state and an investment of $100k on the link would result in a new transition matrix where the second column is [0.032, 0.303, 0.005, 0.005].…”

Section: Modeling Objectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable and Resilient Critical Infrastructure Systems

Gopalakrishnan¹,

Peeta²

2010

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PrefaceIn today's societies, multiple, but individual operational infrastructures such as transportation and power grids exist together and are connected via physical, cyber, and logical interdependencies to function as tightly-coupled socio-technical system of systems with complicated behavior. Continuous, reliable operation and resilience of such critical interdependent infrastructures is crucial for maintaining homeland security, economic prosperity, and quality of people's life.This edited book is motivated by recent advances in simulation, modeling, sensing, communications/information, and intelligent and sustainable technologies that have resulted in the development of sophisticated methodologies and instruments to design, characterize, optimize, and evaluate critical infrastructure systems, their resilience and interdependencies, and their condition and the factors that cause their deterioration.There are ten carefully selected chapters contained in this book which cover the broad spectrum of latest advances in the simulation, modeling, and intelligent engineering of sustainable resilient critical infrastructure systems. Each chapter has been peer-reviewed by at least two anonymous referees to assure the highest quality.The chapter entitled "Synthesis of Modeling and Simulation Methods on Critical Infrastructure Interdependencies Research" introduces a conceptualization of current research that integrates the multiple ideas in the field of infrastructure interdependencies into a unified hierarchical structure that navigates through research advances from early papers in the1980's to date. This research survey highlights that most of the existing interdependence modeling strategies are not competing but rather complementary approaches, which can provide a vehicle for immediate innovative studies on coupled infrastructures, such as stochastic interdependence, cascading failures across systems, and the establishment of risk mitigation principles.The chapter entitled "Interdependencies between Energy and Transportation Systems for National Long Term Planning" proposes a modeling framework to perform long-term electric and transportation infrastructure design at a national Preface VI level, accounting for their interdependencies. The approach combines network flow modeling with a multiobjective solution method.The chapter entitled "A Framework for Assessing the Resilience of Infrastructure and Economic Systems" proposes a general framework for assessing the resilience of infrastructure and economic systems. The framework consists of three primary components: (1) a definition of resilience that is specific to infrastructure systems; (2) a quantitative model for measuring the resilience of systems to disruptive events through the evaluation of both impacts to system performance and the cost of recovery; and (3) a qualitative method for assessing the system properties that inherently determine system resilience.

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“…Torabi et al. () present a literature overview of various approaches to BCM and Kato and Charoenrat (), Merz, Hiete, and Bertsch (), Nosworthy (), Tammineedi (), International Labour Office (ILO, ), and Tjoa, Jakoubi, and Quirchmayr () present a few suggestions for BCM approaches. As a way to increase the consistency of continuity management activities, several standards and good practices have been developed over recent years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Conceptual Foundation of Continuity Management in the Context of Societal Safety

Hassel

Cedergren

2019

Risk Analysis

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Public and private actors with critical roles for ensuring societal safety need to work proactively to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. Traditionally, risk management activities have often been performed in order to ensure continuous functioning of key societal services. Recently, however, business continuity management (BCM), and its analytical subcomponent business impact assessment (BIA), has been introduced and used more extensively by both the private and public sector in order to increase the robustness and resilience of critical infrastructures and societal functions and services. BCM was originally developed in the business sector but has received a broader use during the last decade. Yet, BCM/BIA has gained limited attention in the scientific literature-especially when it comes to clarifying and developing its conceptual basis. First, this article examines and discusses the conceptual foundation of BCM concepts, including practical challenges of applying the concepts. Based on recent conceptual developments from the field of risk management, a developed conceptualization is suggested. Second, the article discusses challenges that arise when applying BCM in the societal safety area and provides some recommendations aiming to improve the clarity and quality of applications. Third, the article provides suggestions of how to integrate the overlapping approaches of BIA and risk assessment in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of proactive, analytic processes. We hope that the article can stimulate a critical discussion about the key concepts of BCM, their wider use in societal safety, and their connection to other concepts and activities such as risk assessment.

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Multicriteria decision support for business continuity planning in the event of critical infrastructure disruptions

Cited by 12 publications

References 25 publications

Scenario‐based impact analysis of a power outage on healthcare facilities in Germany

Scenario‐based impact analysis of a power outage on healthcare facilities in Germany

Sustainable and Resilient Critical Infrastructure Systems

Exploring the Conceptual Foundation of Continuity Management in the Context of Societal Safety

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