Design and initial validation of the Raster method for telecom service availability risk assessment

Crisis organisations depend on telecommunication services; unavailability of these services reduces the effectiveness of crisis response. Crisis organisations should therefore be aware of availability risks, and need a suitable risk assessment method. Such a method needs to be aware of the exceptional circumstances in which crisis organisations operate, and of the commercial structure of modern telecom services. We found that existing risk assessment methods are unsuitable for this problem domain. Hence, crisis organisations do not perform any risk assessment, trust their supplier, or rely on service level agreements, which are not meaningful during crisis situations. We have therefore developed a new risk assessment method, which we call RASTER. We have tested RASTER using a case study at the crisis organisation of a government agency, and improved the method based on the analysis of case results. Our initial validation suggests that the method can yield practical results

Validating the raster risk assessment method in practice

Telecommunication services are essential to modern information systems, especially so for crisis management. Telecoms systems are complex and difficult to analyse. Current risk assessment methods are either not used because of their complexity, or lack rigorous argumentation to justify their results because they are oversimplified. Our challenge has been to develop a risk assessment method that is both usable in practice and delivers understandable arguments to explain and justify its risk evaluations. After experiments to validate the method in laboratory environments, we now present the first results from successful application with practitioners in a regional crisis organization that provides evidence about the practical usability of the method

Availability Incidents in the Telecommunication Domain:A Literature Review

Non-availability incidents in public telecom services may have a wide-spread impact, such as disruption of internet services, mobile services, and land-line communication. This, in turn, may disrupt the life of consumers and citizens, and the provision of services by commercial and public organizations. These incidents are always analyzed and solved by the provider. In Europe, there is a legal obligation to report the analysis and solution of the incident to the national telecom regulator. However, these reports are highly confidential, and beyond some elementary descriptive statistics, they are not analyzed. This means that a significant opportunity is missed to draw lessons from these incidents, which could be valuable to other providers and to standardization bodies. In the LINC project, we aim to develop a method to draw lessons learned from registered non-availability incidents without compromising the confidentiality of those registrations. As a preparation for that, we have conducted a systematic literature review of non-availability incidents in public telecom services reported in the scientific and professional literature, to see what we can learn from the reported incident model and analysis methods used. In this report, we present an incident analysis taxonomy to establish a common terminological ground among researchers and practitioners.<br/

Hierarchical Porous Polybenzimidazole Microsieves: An Efficient Architecture for Anhydrous Proton Transport via Polyionic Liquids

Liquid-induced phase-separation micromolding (LIPSµM) has been successfully used for manufacturing hierarchical porous polybenzimidazole (HPBI) microsieves (42-46% porosity, 30-40 µm thick) with a specific pore architecture (pattern of macropores: ~9 µm in size, perforated, dispersed in a porous matrix with a 50-100 nm pore size). Using these microsieves, proton-exchange membranes were fabricated by the infiltration of a 1H-3-vinylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide liquid and divinylbenzene (as a cross-linker), followed by in situ UV polymerization. Our approach relies on the separation of the ion conducting function from the structural support function. Thus, the polymeric ionic liquid (PIL) moiety plays the role of a proton conductor, whereas the HPBI microsieve ensures the mechanical resistance of the system. The influence of the porous support architecture on both proton transport performance and mechanical strength has been specifically investigated by means of comparison with straight macroporous (36% porosity) and randomly nanoporous (68% porosity) PBI counterparts. The most attractive results were obtained with the poly[1-(3H-imidazolium)ethylene]bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide PIL cross-linked with 1% divinylbenzene supported on HPBI membranes with a 21-µm-thick skin layer, achieving conductivity values up to 85 mS cm-1 at 200 °C under anhydrous conditions and in the absence of mineral acids

Accident Analysis Methods and Models — a Systematic Literature Review

As part of our co-operation with the Telecommunication Agency of the Netherlands, we want to formulate an accident analysis method and model for use in incidents in telecommunications that cause service unavailability. In order to not re-invent the wheel, we wanted to first get an overview of all existing accident analysis methods and models to see if we could find an overarching method and commonalities between models. Furthermore, we wanted to find any methods that had been applied to incidents in telecommunication networks or even been designed specifically for these incidents. In this article, we present a systematic literature review of incident and accident analysis methods across domains. We find that accident analysis methods have experienced a rise in attention over the last 15 years, leading to a plethora of methods. We discuss the three classes in which they are often categorized. We find that each class has its own advantages and disadvantages: an analysis using a sequential method may be easier to understand and communicate and quicker to execute, but may miss vital underlying causes that can later trigger new, similar accidents. An analysis using an epidemiological method takes more time, but it also finds underlying causes the resolution of which may prevent accidents from happening in the future. Systemic methods are appropriate for complex, tightly coupled systems and executing such a method takes a lot of time and resources, rendering it very expensive. This will often not be justified by the costs of the accident (especially in telecommunications networks) and it will therefore be too expensive to be employed in regular businesses. We were not able to find any published definitions of structured methods specific to telecommunications, nor did we find any applications of structured methods specifically to telecommunications

Squeezing the Lemon:Using Accident Analysis for Recommendations to Improve the Resilience of Telecommunications Organizations

Telecommunications networks form critical infrastructure, since accidents in these networks can severely impact the functioning of society. Structured accident analysis methods can help draw lessons from accidents, giving valuable information to improve the resilience of telecommunications networks. In this paper, we introduce a method (TRAM) for accident analysis in the Telecommunication domain by improving AcciMap, which is a popular method for analyzing accidents. The improvements have made AcciMap more efficient and instructive by explicitly identifying ICT aspects of the accidents, extending the method to support the evaluation of crisis organizations and introducing additional notation for feedback loops. This resulted in TRAM, a method with a 25% improved efficiency over AcciMap, while also addressing ICT aspects, leading to concrete actionable results that can help telecommunication organizations grow more resilient

Роль держави у формуванні та реалізації інноваційної моделі розвитку економіки України

Статтю присвячено питанням інноваційного розвитку економіки в контексті сучасної теорії посилення ролі держави в регулюванні соціально-економічних процесів. Розкрито сутність сучасної теорії державного регулювання та її вплив на інноваційний розвиток економіки України.Статья посвящена вопросам инновационного развития экономики в контексте современной теории усиления роли государства в регулировании социально-экономических процессов. Раскрыта сущность современной теории государственного регулирования и ее влияние на инновационное развитие экономики Украины.Article is devoted to innovative development of economy in the context of the modern theory of the role of the state in regulating social and economic processes. The essence of the modern theory of government regulation and its impact on innovation development of economy of Ukraine