PM4 SMP model proposed for system reliability criticality assessment and maintainability improvement

This paper gives a practical systematic approach towards the maintenance procedure optimisation of a critical industrial unit in operation, to improve its maintainability. The resolution of the maintainability challenge in the industrial unit (Vibrating screen unit - VSU) was realised by performing a two-phase critical analysis, encompassing criticality and maintainability assessment. The criticality assessment comprised of failure investigation using fault tree analysis (FTA), vulnerability analysis using reliability block diagram (RBD), and failure mode effect and criticality analysis (FMECA). Furthermore, a maintainability assessment was performed on the industrial unit and improvement opportunities were identified. A generic model (PM4 Model) was conceptualised and used to improve the mean time to repair (MTTR) through a well-documented standard maintenance procedure (SMP)

Applying a Layered Framework to Disaster Recovery

Building highly available information technology (IT) infrastructures has become critical to many corporations’ survival. However, the disaster recovery (DR) industry lacks a common enterprise framework to capitalize on the value that DR provides corporations due in part to inadequate conceptual frameworks for DR that can facilitate the alignment of corporate efforts toward corporate resiliency. To address this problem, we propose a new conceptualization for the DR of enterprise architecture. This conceptual framework comprises DR layers that describe the nature of DR and its related components from a functional and technical point of view. We discuss the benefits of these DR layers to DR teams and compare our approach to traditional thinking. Further, we present a case study, its findings, and their implications for DR. As a result, we demonstrate how our layered framework of enterprise architecture provides a unified understanding of the DR practice, which one can then use to support decision making and corporate alignment of the DR practice and its associated technology

Criticality assessment of energy infrastructure

After the last major accidents in the energy sector of the last decade (USA and Canada (2003), India (2012), Russian-Ukrainian (2009)), energy infrastructure criticality assessment has become one of the most important issues. It has become the topical subject of the economy and national security in all countries. There is no single measure unit for the assessment of critical infrastructure with respect to “interdependency” among critical infrastructure sectors. This paper proposes to use criticality of infrastructure element as a measure to assess the importance of considered element to the normal activity of all sectors of infrastructure. The pilot numerical simulation of heat and electricity infrastructure was performed to demonstrate the implementation of the application of developed method for the assessment of infrastructure functionality and criticality

Optimized Damage Assessment and Recovery through Data Categorization in Critical Infrastructure system.

Critical infrastructures (CI) play a vital role in majority of the fields and sectors worldwide. It contributes a lot towards the economy of nations and towards the wellbeing of the society. They are highly coupled, interconnected and their interdependencies make them more complex systems. Thus, when a damage occurs in a CI system, its complex interdependencies make it get subjected to cascading effects which propagates faster from one infrastructure to another resulting in wide service degradations which in turn causes economic and societal effects. The propagation of cascading effects of disruptive events could be handled efficiently if the assessment and recovery are carried out as quickly as possible. To be an efficient system, it should reduce the impact by reducing the number of nodes undergoing service degradation. In general, the damage assessments include accessing and assessing log information which is very costly in terms of time spent and IO reads. A generic model thus should be very optimal in suggesting smaller number of assessments as possible and at the same time reduce the number of nodes undergoing unnecessary service degradations. This thesis investigates the CI systems in depth to optimize the damage assessment and recovery process so that it could help in resuming the operations of as many safe data items as quickly as possible. It also focuses on reducing the load imposed in terms of number of nodes towards damage assessment and recovery procedures through the proposed optimization model. The quick identification and categorization of the type of data items as damaged, undamaged, or skeptical within the impacted CI system is the key factor which makes this model highly efficient and helps this model to project better performance. The developed model and its algorithm have been implemented on a simulated data and environment whose results shows that the proposed model performs well in terms of time, speed, accuracy, complexity, efficiency, and performance

Prioritizing Intervention Alternatives in the Context of International Development Work: a Modification and Application of the AHP Process in the Context of a World Bank Project in Chad

Making decisions that involve a large number of variables, series of conflicting objectives, complex requests from stakeholders and limited budgets are challenging, regardless of the field. The context of international development poses additional challenges such as working in low-capacity areas that are unstable with potential social unrest, post-disaster or post-conflict situations and unclear profitability measures. However, there are a variety of decision-analysis support tools, which have been developed to help make these decisions easier and less burdensome. While none of these tools have been molded to the context of international development work specifically, the foundation they establish helps to understand how to prioritize the categories that influence a decision and then how to assess potential options against those categories. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is a decision support tool, nested within the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis tool kit, which has become recognized for its ease of use and transparency.The purpose of this paper is to examine how the AHP can be used in the context of international development decisions, what potential additions can be made to the AHP process in order to make it more accommodating to the circumstances of international development and what potentially new approaches can be employed in order to address some of the standing criticisms of the AHP. After extensive theoretical discussion, a more tangible case study from the World Bank is examined, using the developed AHP methodology. The results of the case study demonstrate the role a decision-making framework can play in prioritizing potential investment options. While this paper does not claim to provide answers regarding what potential investment strategies will result in the best outcomes, it does argue that by utilizing a decision-analysis framework and tool, policies and decisions within the field of international development can be made with more transparency, reliability and open discussion from all stakeholders involved.</p

VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF CRITICAL OIL AND GAS INFRASTRUCTURES TO CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS IN THE NIGER DELTA

Oil and gas infrastructures are being severely impacted by extreme climate change-induced disasters such as flood, storm, tidal surges, and rising temperature in the Niger Delta with high. There is a high potential for disruption of upstream and downstream activities as the world climate continues to change. The lack of knowledge of the criticality and vulnerability of infrastructures could further exacerbate impacts and the assets management value chain. This thesis, therefore, applied a criteria-based systematic evaluation of the criticality and vulnerability of selected critical oil and gas infrastructure to climate change impacts in the Niger Delta. It applied multi-criteria decision-making analysis (MCDA) tool – analytic hierarchy process (AHP), in prioritising systems according to their vulnerability and criticality and recommended sustainable adaptation mechanisms. Through a critical review of relevant literature, seven (7) criteria each for criticality and vulnerability assessment were synthesised accordingly and implemented in the assessment process. A further exploratory investigation, physical examination of infrastructures, focus groups and elite interviews were conducted to identify possible vulnerable infrastructures and scope qualitative and quantitative data for analysis using Mi-AHP spreadsheet. Results prioritised the criticality of infrastructures in the following order: terminals (27.1%), flow stations (18.5%), roads/bridges (15.5%), and transformers/high voltage cables (11.1%) while the least critical are loading bays (8.6%) and oil wellheads (5.1%). Further analysis indicated that the most vulnerable critical infrastructures are: pipelines (25%), terminals (17%) and roads/bridges (14%) while transformers/high voltage cables and oil wellheads where ranked as least vulnerable with 11% and 9% respectively. In addition to vulnerability assessment, an extended documentary analysis of groundwater geospatial stream flow and water discharge rate monitoring models suggest that an in-situ rise in groundwater level and increase in water discharge rate (WDR) at the upper Niger River could indicate a high probability of flood event at the lower Delta, hence further exacerbates the vulnerability of critical infrastructures. Accordingly, physical examination of infrastructures suggests that an increase in regional and ambient temperature disrupts the functionality of compressors and optimal operation of Flow Stations and inevitably exacerbate corrosion of cathodic systems when mixed with the saltwater flood from the Atlantic. The thesis produced a flexible conceptual framework for the vulnerability assessment of critical oil/gas infrastructures, contextualised and recommended sustainable climate adaptation strategies for the Niger Delta oil/gas industry. Some of these strategies include installation of industrial groundwater and water discharge rate monitoring systems, construction of elevated platforms for critical infrastructures installations, substitution of cathodic pipes with duplex stainless and glass reinforcement epoxy pipes. Others include proper channelisation of drainages and river systems around critical platforms, use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for flood monitoring and the establishment of inter-organisational climate impact assessment groups in the oil/gas industry. Climate impact assessment (CIA) is suggested for oil and gas projects as part of best practice in the environmental management and impact assessment framework

Performance Modeling for Sewer Networks

In spite of the pressing need to preserve sewer networks, sewer pipelines and manholes are prone to deterioration and hence to collapse. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) (2017), the sewer network’s grade of the United States (US) is grade “D+”, making it one of the worst infrastructure assets in the US. In addition, the Canadian Infrastructure Report Card (CIRC) (2016) states that more than half of their linear wastewater assets’ physical condition were ranked between very poor to good states, with a total replacement value of $47-billion. Despite the enormous studies conducted in this field, many of the efforts lack a comprehensive assessment of sewer components, leading to misjudged rehabilitation decision plans and continued asset deterioration. Improved cost-effective models that optimize sewer rehabilitation plans, given the scarcity of resources, are clearly needed. Accordingly, the paramount objective of this research is to design a decision-support system that optimizes the maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement (MRR) decisions of sewer pipelines and manholes. The first phase of the research is to identify several defects that impact the condition of sewer components and to model the erosion void defect utilizing fuzzy expert system. The model provided accuracy, true positive rate and precision values of 83 The research establishes an approach to aggregate the condition indexes of all pipelines and manholes in the network through a criticality model to supply the overall network performance index. Accordingly, the economic factors are deemed the most important ones compared to environmental and public factors. An informative optimized model that integrates the outputs of the previously developed models is designed through the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) approach to maximize the sewer network performance and minimize the total costs. Different trade-off solutions are then established by varying the weights of the objective functions and considering the defined constraints. The best network performance improvement attained is 1.47 with a total cost of$1.39- million. The comprehensive sewer network assessment performed in this research will improve current practices in sewer networks management, thereby reducing sewer network failures and avoiding catastrophic sinkholes

System of Systems Engineering for Policy Design

A system of systems (SoS) framework is proposed for policy design that takes into account the value systems of multiple participants, harnesses the complexity of strategic interactions among participants, and confronts the risks and uncertainties present in participants’ decision making. SoS thinking provides an integrative and adaptive mindset, which is needed to tackle policy challenges characterized by conflict, complexity, and uncertainty. With the aim of putting SoS thinking into practice, operational methods and tools are presented herein. Specifically, SoS engineering methodologies to create value system models, agent-based models of competitive and cooperative behaviour under conflict, and risk management models are developed and integrated into the framework. The proposed structure, methods and tools can be utilized to organize policy design discourse. Communication among participants involved in the policy discussion is structured around SoS models, which are used to integrate multiple perspectives of a system and to test the effectiveness of policies in achieving desirable outcomes under varying conditions. In order to demonstrate the proposed methods and tools that have been developed to enliven policy design discourse, a theoretical common-pool resources dilemma is utilized. The generic application illustrates the methodology of constructing ordinal preferences from values. Also, it is used to validate the agent-based modeling and simulation platform as a tool to investigate strategic interactions among participants and harness the potential to influence and enable participants to achieve desirable outcomes. A real-world common pool resources dilemma in the provisioning and security considerations of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore is examined and employed as a case study for applying strategic conflict models in risk management. Overall, this thesis advances the theory and application of SoS engineering and focuses on understanding value systems, handling complexity in terms of conflict dynamics, and finally, enhancing risk management