Resilience Analytics with Application to Power Grid of a Developing Region

Abstract

Infrastructure development of volatile regions is a significant investment by international government and nongovernment organizations, with attendant requirements for risk management. Global development banks may be tasked to manage these investments and provide a channel between donors and borrowers. Moreover, various stakeholders from the private sector, local and international agencies, and the military can be engaged in conception, planning, and implementation of constituent projects. Emergent and future conditions of military conflict, politics, economics, technology, environment, behaviors, institutions, and society that stress infrastructure development are prevalent, and funding mechanisms are vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse. This article will apply resilience analytics with scenario-based preferences to identify the stressors that most influence a prioritization of initiatives in the electric power sector of Afghanistan. The resilience in this article is conceived in terms of the degree of disruption of priorities when stressors influence the preferences of stakeholders, and ultimately a prioritization of initiatives. The ancillary results include an understanding of which initiatives contribute most and least across strategic criteria and which criteria have the most impact for the analysis. The article concludes with recommendations for risk monitoring and risk management of the portfolio of stressors through the life cycle and horizon of grid capacity expansion.

Resilience Analysis of a Remote Offshore Oil and Gas Facility for a Potential Hydrocarbon Release

“…Vulnerability analysis is performed to identify the major factors that contribute to the cascading failures of systems (internally or interdependently). Thorisson et al (41) proposed the concept of resilience analysis in terms of identifying stressors (single or multiple) that affect the overall performance of the system. Khakzad and Reniers (42) defined the concept of vulnerability analysis as an explanation of weakness and critical component failures that can affect the system performance, which is different than traditional risk analysis because of its ability to identify hazardous events, their possibility, and potential consequences.…”

Identification of Protective Actions to Reduce the Vulnerability of Safety‐Critical Systems to Malevolent Intentional Acts: An Optimization‐Based Decision‐Making Approach

“…In Thorisson et al. (), risk is addressed in terms of sensitivities of a multicriteria portfolio optimization, identifying which scenarios are most and least disruptive to multicriteria optimization. In particular, the approach is used to identify those “stressors” (e.g., natural disasters, mismanaged funds, lack of agency cooperation) that most influence a prioritization of initiatives in the electrical power sector in Afghanistan.…”

“…Based on the proposed approach, the relative priorities among policy initiatives and actions are quantified, in order to preserve and sustain the compliance of risk, safety, and security programs with organizational and administrative guidelines. In Thorisson et al (2017), risk is addressed in terms of sensitivities of a multicriteria portfolio optimization, identifying which scenarios are most and least disruptive to multicriteria optimization. In particular, the approach is used to identify those "stressors" (e.g., natural disasters, mismanaged funds, lack of agency cooperation) that most influence a prioritization of initiatives in the electrical power sector in Afghanistan.…”

“…On the other hand, in modern portfolio theory, it is well known that a diversified portfolio can be very effective to reduce nonsystematic risks. The approach of diversification is equally important in choosing robust portfolios of infrastructure projects that may be subject to emergent and unknown risks (Joshi & Lambert, 2011;Thorisson, Lambert, Cardenas, & Linkov, 2017). The proposed methodology is expected to contribute also in this direction of optimal classification of options/investments and combinations of the same.…”

Development and Introduction of the Risk-Sentience Auxiliary Framework (RSAF) as an Enabler to the ISO 31000 and ISO 31010 for High-Risk Environments

“…The absence of principles relating to the importance of a staff development program and establishing a system to acknowledge employees who detect risks early are pointed as limitations, and suggestions include the possible use of subjectivity, intuition, past experiences and motivation to enable efficient use of this standard (Lalonde and Boiral 2012). Even as ISO addresses risk as an "effect of uncertainty on objectives" a parallel addressing of risk as "an influence of scenarios to priorities" has been adopted by others (Barker et al 2017;Thorisson et al 2017). …”