Quantify resilience enhancement of UTS through exploiting connect community and internet of everything emerging technologies

This work aims at investigating and quantifying the Urban Transport System (UTS) resilience enhancement enabled by the adoption of emerging technology such as Internet of Everything (IoE) and the new trend of the Connected Community (CC). A conceptual extension of Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) and its formalization have been proposed and used to model UTS complexity. The scope is to identify the system functions and their interdependencies with a particular focus on those that have a relation and impact on people and communities. Network analysis techniques have been applied to the FRAM model to identify and estimate the most critical community-related functions. The notion of Variability Rate (VR) has been defined as the amount of output variability generated by an upstream function that can be tolerated/absorbed by a downstream function, without significantly increasing of its subsequent output variability. A fuzzy based quantification of the VR on expert judgment has been developed when quantitative data are not available. Our approach has been applied to a critical scenario (water bomb/flash flooding) considering two cases: when UTS has CC and IoE implemented or not. The results show a remarkable VR enhancement if CC and IoE are deploye

Improving resilience in Critical Infrastructures through learning from past events

Modern societies are increasingly dependent on the proper functioning of Critical Infrastructures (CIs). CIs produce and distribute essential goods or services, as for power transmission systems, water treatment and distribution infrastructures, transportation systems, communication networks, nuclear power plants, and information technologies. Being resilient, where resilience denotes the capacity of a system to recover from challenges or disruptive events, becomes a key property for CIs, which are constantly exposed to threats that can undermine safety, security, and business continuity. Nowadays, a variety of approaches exists in the context of CIs’ resilience research. This dissertation starts with a systematic review based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) on the approaches that have a complete qualitative dimension, or that can be used as entry points for semi-quantitative analyses. The review identifies four principal dimensions of resilience referred to CIs (i.e., techno-centric, organizational, community, and urban) and discusses the related qualitative or semi-quantitative methods. The scope of the thesis emphasizes the organizational dimension, as a socio-technical construct. Accordingly, the following research question has been posed: how can learning improve resilience in an organization? Firstly, the benefits of learning in a particular CI, i.e. the supply chain in reverse logistics related to the small arms utilized by Italian Armed Forces, have been studied. Following the theory of Learning From Incidents, the theoretical model helped to elaborate a centralized information management system for the Supply Chain Management of small arms within a Business Intelligence (BI) framework, which can be the basis for an effective decision-making process, capable of increasing the systemic resilience of the supply chain itself. Secondly, the research question has been extended to another extremely topical context, i.e. the Emergency Management (EM), exploring the crisis induced learning where single-loop and double-loop learning cycles can be established regarding the behavioral perspective. Specifically, the former refers to the correction of practices within organizational plans without changing core beliefs and fundamental rules of the organization, while the latter aims at resolving incompatible organizational behavior by restructuring the norms themselves together with the associated practices or assumptions. Consequently, with the aim of ensuring high EM systems resilience, and effective single-loop and double-loop crisis induced learning at organizational level, the study examined learning opportunities that emerge through the exploration of adaptive practices necessary to face the complexity of a socio-technical work domain as the EM of Covid-19 outbreaks on Oil & Gas platforms. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches have been adopted to analyze the resilience of this specific socio-technical system. On this consciousness, with the intention to explore systems theoretic possibilities to model the EM system, the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) has been proposed as a qualitative method for developing a systematic understanding of adaptive practices, modelling planning and resilient behaviors and ultimately supporting crisis induced learning. After the FRAM analysis, the same EM system has also been studied adopting a Bayesian Network (BN) to quantify resilience potentials of an EM procedure resulting from the adaptive practices and lessons learned by an EM organization. While the study of CIs is still an open and challenging topic, this dissertation provides methodologies and running examples on how systemic approaches may support data-driven learning to ultimately improve organizational resilience. These results, possibly extended with future research drivers, are expected to support decision-makers in their tactical and operational endeavors

Framing the FRAM: A literature review on the functional resonance analysis method

The development of the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) has been motivated by the perceived limitations of fundamentally deterministic and probabilistic approaches to understand complex systems’ behaviour. Congruent with the principles of Resilience Engineering, over recent years the FRAM has been progressively developed in scientific terms, and increasingly adopted in industrial environments with reportedly successful results. Nevertheless, a wide literature review focused on the method is currently lacking. On these premises, this paper aims to summarise all available published research in English about FRAM. More than 1700 documents from multiple scientific repositories were reviewed through a protocol based on the PRISMA review technique. The paper aims to uncover a number of characteristics of the FRAM research, both in terms of the method's application and of the authors contributing to its development. The systematic analysis explores the method in terms of its methodological aspects, application domains, and enhancements in qualitative and quantitative terms, as well as proposing potential future research directions

Cyber resilience meta-modelling: The railway communication case study

Recent times have demonstrated how much the modern critical infrastructures (e.g., energy, essential services, people and goods transportation) depend from the global communication networks. However, in the current Cyber-Physical World convergence, sophisticated attacks to the cyber layer can provoke severe damages to both physical structures and the operations of infrastructure affecting not only its functionality and safety, but also triggering cascade effects in other systems because of the tight interdependence of the systems that characterises the modern society. Hence, critical infrastructure must integrate the current cyber-security approach based on risk avoidance with a broader perspective provided by the emerging cyber-resilience paradigm. Cyber resilience is aimed as a way absorb the consequences of these attacks and to recover the functionality quickly and safely through adaptation. Several high-level frameworks and conceptualisations have been proposed but a formal definition capable of translating cyber resilience into an operational tool for decision makers considering all aspects of such a multifaceted concept is still missing. To this end, the present paper aims at providing an operational formalisation for cyber resilience starting from the Cyber Resilience Ontology presented in a previous work using model-driven principles. A domain model is defined to cope with the different aspects and “resilience-assurance” processes that it can be valid in various application domains. In this respect, an application case based on critical transportation communications systems, namely the railway communication system, is provided to prove the feasibility of the proposed approach and to identify future improvements

Reviewing qualitative research approaches in the context of critical infrastructure resilience

Modern societies are increasingly dependent on the proper functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs). CIs produce and distribute essential goods or services, as for power transmission systems, water treatment and distribution infrastructures, transportation systems, communication networks, nuclear power plants, and information technologies. Being resilient becomes a key property for CIs, which are constantly exposed to threats that can undermine safety, security, and business continuity. Nowadays, a variety of approaches exist in the context of CIs’ resilience research. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review on the approaches that have a complete qualitative dimension, or that can be used as entry points for semi-quantitative analyses. The study aims to uncover the usage of qualitative research methods through a systematic review based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). The paper identifies four principal dimensions of resilience referred to CIs (i.e., techno-centric, organisational, community, and urban) and discusses the related qualitative methods. Besides many studies being focused on energy and transportation systems, the literature review allows to observe that interviews and questionnaires are most frequently used to gather qualitative data, besides a high percentage of mixed-method research. The article aims to provide a synthesis of literature on qualitative methods used for resilience research in the domain of CIs, detailing lessons learned from such approaches to shed lights on best practices and identify possible future research directions

Operations Management

Global competition has caused fundamental changes in the competitive environment of the manufacturing and service industries. Firms should develop strategic objectives that, upon achievement, result in a competitive advantage in the market place. The forces of globalization on one hand and rapidly growing marketing opportunities overseas, especially in emerging economies on the other, have led to the expansion of operations on a global scale. The book aims to cover the main topics characterizing operations management including both strategic issues and practical applications. A global environmental business including both manufacturing and services is analyzed. The book contains original research and application chapters from different perspectives. It is enriched through the analyses of case studies

Second law of thermodynamics and urban green infrastructure – A knowledge synthesis to address spatial planning strategies

Planning strategies driven by the second law of thermodynamics (SLT) are innovative approaches to sustainability but they are still in seminal phase. In this article, a coupled review of SLT within spatial planning is accomplished looking at the main applications in urban green infrastructure (UGI) planning. In particular, a systemic review of UGI planning and thermodynamics has been carried out to identify all the occurrences to date in the scientific literature. Secondly, a scoping review of SLT-related concepts of exergy, entropy and urban metabolism is presented in order to investigate the main applications of, and gaps in, urban spatial planning. Results indicate that UGI and ecosystem service planning based on SLT is a relatively new field of research. Moreover, some general indications are derived for the development of spatial UGI planning strategies based on SLT. The work then aims to contribute to the improvement and/or development of even more solid planning strategies supporting a SLTconscious green transition of cities