Continuous and multidimensional assessment of resilience based on functionality analysis for interconnected systems

International audienceThe increasing number of disruptions, from natural disasters to terrorist attacks, is today a major concern of our modern society. As a result, to the interdependent nature of infrastructures, disruptions cause domino and cascade effects. For instance, a disruption in an energy infrastructure affects a rail-transportation infrastructure that further affects other infrastructures. Mitigating the negative effects means that the infrastructures must recover in minimum time, with minimum costs their initial functioning capacity, i.e., they must be resilient. So, stakeholders must analyse the resilience of infrastructures before any disruption to anticipate the right decisions. This article studies the concepts of resilience and resilience assessment to bridges the gap between rough stakeholders’ data and resilience evaluation for interdependent systems. The result is an original toolequipped approach that combines continuous with multidimensional resilience evaluation and assessment. The approach is based on simple and generic criteria that can be extended and adapted depending on the context and needs

Adapting our sea ports to the challenges of climate change: development and validation of a Port Resilience Index

Climate change, which is largely caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2, is one of the main challenges facing humankind today. In this context, and from the logistics point of view, ports are critical infrastructures not only because of their great vulnerability to such device phenomena, but also because of their key importance in global supply chains. We therefore need indications that will allow us to both determine a port’s resilience to the various challenges posed by climate change and take preventive actions to ensure the port can function correctly over time. This study presents a port resilience index (PRI), which, unlike existing indices, considers all stakeholders to determine the level of operational resilience of port processes. The index was validated in the external port of A Coruna ˜ (Galicia), chosen because of its especially adverse conditions and because in Spain, the effects of climate change are likely to be especially damaging. The results show that this port has an overall PRI of 52% and that its infrastructure and facilities and operational environment against the climate change challenge are especially sensitive. Analysis of the different factors of resilience allows port managers and policy makers to focus their actions on the factors that have the greatest impact of resilience. This should lead to better use of resources and more efficient contingency plans

Multi-objective consideration of earthquake resilience in the built environment: the case of Wenchuan earthquake

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake is one of the largest and deadliest events of the last century, both in terms of victims and seismically-triggered geo-environmental hazards. The combined effects resulting from the seismic activity of 2008 led to major damages in several domains of the local society, including the built environment and the social component, highlighting the extensive gap related to resilience measures aimed at both prevention and recovery in case of a disruption. Thus, it is imperative for the development of a multi-objective and comprehensive formulation for resilience combining holistically all the diverse facets of a local community. To this regard, this paper presents a wide-spectrum analysis and preliminary findings, being structured in working threads specifically addressed in the context of an ongoing project (REACH). The focus is on the built environment damage analysis following the field work which took place in December 2016 in the Wenchuan territory, involving 3D laser scanning activity of 7 high-risk areas and the related audit and preliminary structural analysis of the damage. As a result, a set of external and internal factors have been identified as possible key causes of the surveyed damages. Of these, external factors mainly relate to environmental and hazardous properties, whereas internal indicators involve structural features as well as building regulations

Resilienssin ulottuvuudet

Resilience is the buzzword of our time. The term has a long tradition, but it only became very popular in the 2010s. Resilience is studied in several disciplines. In addition, the term has numerous practical applications. This has led to the fact that it is not clear what resilience means at any given context. Since the term is often still translated into national languages, mostly without reaching its multiplicity, it further obscures the understanding of resilience. The article creates a concise overview of the concept of resilience, its history and today's applications. It presents the resilience research of the last two decades from many perspectives: society, organization, technology, ecology, macroeconomics and psychology. The article identifies as a kind of watershed in resilience theories the question of whether resilience is recovery after an external shock or adaptation to change. The article focuses on the question of whether and how resilience can be measured. The article also urges Finnish research to seize the opportunity to conduct empirical resilience research using advanced qualitative and quantitative methodsResilienssi on aikamme iskusanoja. Termillä on pitkät perinteet, mutta vasta 2010-luvulla se nousi suureen suosioon. Resilienssiä tutkitaan usean tieteenalan piirissä, ja termillä on lukuisia käytännöllisiä sovellusaloja. Tämä on johtanut siihen, että ei ole yksiselitteistä, mitä resilienssi milloinkin tarkoittaa. Termin kääntäminen kansallisille kielille, useimmiten tavoittamatta sen moninaisuutta, hämärtää entisestään resilienssin ymmärtämistä. Artikkeli luo tiiviin katsauksen resilienssin käsitteeseen, sen historiaan ja nykypäivän sovelluksiin. Siinä esitellään kahden viimeisen vuosikymmenen resilienssitutkimusta yhteiskunnallisesta, organisaatiollisesta, teknologisesta, ekologisesta, makrotaloudellisesta ja psykologisesta näkökulmasta. Artikkeli käsittelee muun muassa resilienssiteorioiden eräänlaista vedenjakajaa, nimittäin kysymystä, onko resilienssi palautumista ulkoisen shokin jälkeen vai sopeutumista muutokseen. Erityisen huomion kohteena on myös kysymys resilienssin mittaamisen mahdollisuuksista ja siihen soveltuvista menetelmistä. Lopuksi käsitellään resilienssikäsitteen hyödyllisyyttä rauhan-, konfliktin- ja maailmanpolitiikan tutkimuksessa ja käytännössä

A disaster-damage-based framework for assessing urban resilience to intense rainfall-induced flooding

Resilience has been widely used as a concept to analyse, understand, and improve cities' coping capacities to disasters. However, it is still a challenge to operationalise and quantify resilience. This study proposes a framework for assessing resilience to disasters based on the relationship between disaster intensity and damage rate. We use intense (short-term heavy) rainfall-induced urban flooding in Shenzhen city, one of the largest cities in China, as an example to explore the main features and transferability of the proposed resilience assessment framework. In addition, we demonstrate the usability of the proposed framework by using it to assess and compare the effectiveness of two resilience-building strategies: (1) permeable pavement transformation and (2) land vulnerability reduction. This research makes an innovative contribution through its effective disaster-damage-based approach for quantitatively evaluating urban resilience to disasters, which can support building resilience and mitigating the impact of climate change

Household resilience against food Insecurity in areas of protracted conflicts: a Libyan study.

Recent estimates provided by UN institutions indicate that over 820 million people are currently suffering from food insecurity worldwide. Conflict has been widely identified as one of the key causes of such persistent and high level of global food insecurity, particularly in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, including Libya. It is, therefore, important to know how to overcome this problem. Recently, ‘resilience-building’ has been identified by many development institutions around the world as a strategy to improve food security in conflict-affected areas. However, little was empirically known what makes households resilient against food insecurity in areas of protracted conflicts. In this thesis, I explored this question based on research in Libya. Drawing on a range of literature, especially the Sustainable Livelihoods literature, I developed an analytical framework. In this framework, resilience was defined as the ability of a household to maintain an appropriate level of food consumption (access) during conflict times. It was proposed that this ability to be resilient would depend on nine factors: exposure-sensitivity to conflicts, five types of assets (natural capital, physical capital, financial capital, human capital and social capital), coping strategies, access to basic services (ABS), and social safety nets (SSN). A mixed-methods approach was used in the research. Data were collected through two phases – a qualitative phase and a quantitative phase. The purpose of the qualitative phase was to understand the contexts in Libya, including the nature of the conflicts and its effects on household food security; the nature of assets important in Libyan context; the strategies households used to cope with conflicts and food insecurity; and the nature of the ABS and SSNs relevant to Libya. For this, data were gathered through 55 semi-structured interviews as well as field observations and conversations. The data were analysed qualitatively using the NVivo software. The findings from the qualitative phase were then fed into the design of the quantitive part of the research. In the quantitative phase, survey data were collected from a sample of 320 households. A structured questionnaire was used in data collection. The questionnaire data were analysed using the software SPSS versions 25 and 26. Food security was measured using the Food Consumption Score (FCS) and the Household Food InsecurityAccess Scale (HFIAS). Index scores were created for both FCS and HFIAS according to the guideline in the literature. For the nine explanatory variables, index scores were also created using descriptive statistics and Principal Component Analysis. To determine the effects of these nine explanatory variables on food insecurity resilience, binary logistics regression analyses were performed. Results from both the qualitative and quantitative phase confirmed a significant decline in households’ food security during conflict times, compared to the pre-conflict times. The result of the qualitative phase suggested that all the factors in the proposed analytical framework were important for household food security. However, quantitative analyses showed that only social capital at time t (pre-conflict) had a statistically significant positive effect on resilience against food insecurity during the major conflict in 2011 (time t+1). To analyse resilience in time t+2, two logistic models were created – effects of the nine explanatory variables that households possessed in time t, and time t+1. The results of the first model indicated that household natural capital in time t had a significant positive effect on resilience in time t+2. The result of the second model indicated that household resilience in time t+2 was significantly affected by three variables – natural capital, financial capital and social capital in time t+1. Most of these significant effects were, however, found in the models in which food security was measured as FCSs. The main conclusion of this research is that assets play important roles in household food security resilience. The findings also lead to the conclusion that the type of assets that can affect household resilience also depends on which conflict time is taken into analysis and how the variable “food (in)security” is measured. These suggest that, for resilience building in areas of protracted conflict, it is important to identify which assets are important. Development agencies and institutions should then focus on protecting and improving those assets. It is also important for developing agencies to use appropriate tools for assessing and monitoring “food (in)security”, since the results may be different based on which tools are used

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

Disaster risk management of interdependent infrastructure systems for community resilience planning

This research focuses on developing methodologies to model the damage and recovery of interdependent infrastructure systems under disruptive events for community resilience planning. The overall research can be broadly divided into two parts: developing a model to simulate the post-disaster performance of interdependent infrastructure systems and developing decision frameworks to support pre-disaster risk mitigation and post-disaster recovery planning of the interdependent infrastructure systems towards higher resilience. The Dynamic Integrated Network (DIN) model is proposed in this study to simulate the performance of interdependent infrastructure systems over time following disruptive events. It can consider three different levels of interdependent relationships between different infrastructure systems: system-to-system level, system-to-facility level and facility-to-facility level. The uncertainties in some of the modeling parameters are modeled. The DIN model first assesses the inoperability of the network nodes and links over time to simulate the damage and recovery of the interdependent infrastructure facilities, and then assesses the recovery and resilience of the individual infrastructure systems and the integrated network utilizing some network performance metrics. The recovery simulation result from the proposed model is compared to two conventional models, one with no interdependency considered, and the other one with only system-level interdependencies considered. The comparison results suggest that ignoring the interdependencies between facilities in different infrastructure systems would lead to poorly informed decision making. The DIN model is validated through simulating the recovery of the interdependent power, water and cellular systems of Galveston City, Texas after Hurricane Ike (2008). Implementing strategic pre-disaster risk mitigation plan to improve the resilience of the interdependent infrastructure systems is essential for enhancing the social security and economic prosperity of a community. Majority of the existing infrastructure risk mitigation studies or projects focus on a single infrastructure system, which may not be the most efficient and effective way to mitigate the loss and enhance the overall community disaster resilience. This research proposes a risk-informed decision framework which could support the pre-disaster risk mitigation planning of several interdependent infrastructure systems. The characteristics of the Interdependent Infrastructure Risk Mitigation (IIRM) decision problem, such as objective, decision makers, constraints, etc., are clearly identified. A four-stage decision framework to solve the IIRM problem is also presented. The application of the proposed IIRM decision framework is illustrated using a case study on pre-disaster risk mitigation planning for the interdependent critical infrastructure systems in Jamaica. The outcome of the IIRM problem is useful for the decision makers to allocate limited risk mitigation budget or resources to the most critical infrastructure facilities in different systems to achieve greater community disaster resilience. Optimizing the post-disaster recovery of damaged infrastructure systems is essential to alleviate the adverse impacts of natural disasters to communities and enhance their disaster resilience. As a result of infrastructure interdependencies, the complete functional restoration of a facility in one infrastructure system relies on not only the physical recovery of itself, but also the recovery of the facilities in other systems that it depends on. This study introduces the Interdependent Infrastructure Recovery Planning (IIRP) problem, which aims at optimizing the assignment and scheduling of the repair teams for an infrastructure system with considering the repair plan of the other infrastructure systems during the post-disaster recovery phase. Key characteristics of the IIRP problem are identified and a game theory-based IIRP decision framework is presented. Two recovery time-based performance metrics are introduced and applied to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the post-disaster recovery plan. The IIRP decision framework is illustrated using the interdependent power and water systems of the Centerville virtual community subjected to seismic hazard