scholarly journals Integrating Resilience in Time-based Dependency Analysis: A Large-Scale Case Study for Urban Critical Infrastructures

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Rosato ◽  
Antonio Di Pietro ◽  
Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou ◽  
George Stergiopoulos ◽  
Giulio Smedile

As critical systems shall withstand different types of perturbations affecting their functionalities and their service level, resilience is a very important requirement. Especially in an urban critical infrastructures where the occurrence of natural events may influence the state of other dependent infrastructures from various different sectors, the overall resilience of such infrastructures against large scale failures is even more important. When a perturbation occurs in a system, the quality (level) of the service provided by the affected system will be reduced and a recovery phase will be triggered to restore the system to its normal operation level. According to the implemented recovery controls, the restoration phase may follow a different growth model. This paper extends a previous time-based dependency risk analysis methodology by integrating and assessing the effect of recovery controls. The main goal is to dynamically assess the evolution of recovery over time, in order to identify how the expected recovery plans will eventually affect the overall risk of the critical paths. The proposed recovery-aware time-based dependency analysis methodology was integrated into the CIPCast Decision Support System that enables risk forecast due to natural events to identify vulnerable and disrupted assets (e.g., electric substations, telecommunication components) and measure the expected risk paths. Thus, CIPCast can be valuable to Critical Infrastructure Operators and other Emergency Managers involved in a crisis assessment to evaluate the effect of natural and anthropic threats affecting critical assets and plan proper countermeasures to reduce the overall risk of degradation of services. The proposed methodology is evaluated in a real scenario, which utilizes several infrastructures and Points of Interest of the city of Rome.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Kaiser ◽  
Vito Latora ◽  
Dirk Witthaut

AbstractIn our daily lives, we rely on the proper functioning of supply networks, from power grids to water transmission systems. A single failure in these critical infrastructures can lead to a complete collapse through a cascading failure mechanism. Counteracting strategies are thus heavily sought after. In this article, we introduce a general framework to analyse the spreading of failures in complex networks and demostrate that not only decreasing but also increasing the connectivity of the network can be an effective method to contain damages. We rigorously prove the existence of certain subgraphs, called network isolators, that can completely inhibit any failure spreading, and we show how to create such isolators in synthetic and real-world networks. The addition of selected links can thus prevent large scale outages as demonstrated for power transmission grids.


Author(s):  
David Mendonça ◽  
William A. Wallace ◽  
Barbara Cutler ◽  
James Brooks

AbstractLarge-scale disasters can produce profound disruptions in the fabric of interdependent critical infrastructure systems such as water, telecommunications and electric power. The work of post-disaster infrastructure restoration typically requires information sharing and close collaboration across these sectors; yet – due to a number of factors – the means to investigate decision making phenomena associated with these activities are limited. This paper motivates and describes the design and implementation of a computer-based synthetic environment for investigating collaborative information seeking in the performance of a (simulated) infrastructure restoration task. The main contributions of this work are twofold. First, it develops a set of theoretically grounded measures of collaborative information seeking processes and embeds them within a computer-based system. Second, it suggests how these data may be organized and modeled to yield insights into information seeking processes in the performance of a complex, collaborative task. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of this work for practice and for future research.


Author(s):  
André de Waal

Purpose Happiness at work (HAW) is receiving much attention in the literature, as HAW seems to have a positive effect on organisational performance, such as in increase of productivity, lower turnover of employees and less customer complaints. There is however no research into the relation between HAW and the attractiveness of an organisation. It stands to reason that people who are happier at work are also happier about their organisation and express this to their family and friends. Having an attractive organisation is becoming increasingly important as the world is currently experiencing an economic boom creating shortages of qualified personnel. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach A possible way of creating an attractive organisation is by transforming the workplace into a high-performing organisation (HPO). The study described in this paper is looking in this respect at three hypotheses: H1. Higher HAW will increase the attractiveness of the organisation; H2. Becoming an HPO will increase HAW; and H3. Becoming an HPO will increase the attractiveness of the organisation. A large-scale survey of Dutch managers and employees was undertaken in which the respondents were asked their opinion of the high-performance level and attractiveness of their organisation, and their happiness with their job and organisation. Findings The study results show that the three hypotheses are basically confirmed. Increasing the happiness of work of employees, in general, raises the feeling of how attractive the organisation is to the employees themselves and to the external world. However, this positive feeling is mainly true for the work itself but not so much for how committed employees feel to the organisation. Practical implications Organisations now have knowledge at their disposal about ways to promote happiness in their employees, thus raising their attractiveness to current and future employees. Originality/value The study results indicate that senior management has to make more effort to raise the quality level of the organisation, preferably towards the high performance level, in order for employees to start feeling more committed to their organisation. This is because the study results show that transforming an organisation into a high-performance entity increases happiness of employees at work significantly, especially about their work and in a lesser degree with the commitment they feel towards the organisation itself. This result has not been found before, so this research provides managers for the first time with a validated way to help their staff to become happier and more productive.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 10366
Author(s):  
César Córcoles ◽  
Germán Cobo ◽  
Ana-Elena Guerrero-Roldán

A variety of tools are available to collect, process and analyse learning data obtained from the clickstream generated by students watching learning resources in video format. There is also some literature on the uses of such data in order to better understand and improve the teaching-learning process. Most of the literature focuses on large scale learning scenarios, such as MOOCs, where videos are watched hundreds or thousands of times. We have developed a solution to collect clickstream analytics data applicable to smaller scenarios, much more common in primary, secondary and higher education, where videos are watched tens or hundreds of times, and to analyse whether the solution is useful to teachers to improve the learning process. We have deployed it in a real scenario and collected real data. Furthermore, we have processed and presented the data visually to teachers for those scenarios and have collected and analysed their perception of their usefulness. We conclude that the collected data are perceived as useful by teachers to improve the teaching and learning process.


Author(s):  
Nenad Jukic ◽  
Miguel Velasco

Defining data warehouse requirements is widely recognized as one of the most important steps in the larger data warehouse system development process. This paper examines the potential risks and pitfalls within the data warehouse requirement collection and definition process. A real scenario of a large-scale data warehouse implementation is given, and details of this project, which ultimately failed due to inadequate requirement collection and definition process, are described. The presented case underscores and illustrates the impact of the requirement collection and definition process on the data warehouse implementation, while the case is analyzed within the context of the existing approaches, methodologies, and best practices for prevention and avoidance of typical data warehouse requirement errors and oversights.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
Nenad Jukic ◽  
Miguel Velasco

Defining data warehouse requirements is widely recognized as one of the most important steps in the larger data warehouse system development process. This paper examines the potential risks and pitfalls within the data warehouse requirement collection and definition process. A real scenario of a large-scale data warehouse implementation is given, and details of this project, which ultimately failed due to inadequate requirement collection and definition process, are described. The presented case underscores and illustrates the impact of the requirement collection and definition process on the data warehouse implementation, while the case is analyzed within the context of the existing approaches, methodologies, and best practices for prevention and avoidance of typical data warehouse requirement errors and oversights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Song Li ◽  
Manel Grifoll ◽  
Miquel Estrada ◽  
Pengjun Zheng ◽  
Hongxiang Feng

Many governments have been strengthening the construction of hardware facilities and equipment to prevent and control marine oil spills. However, in order to deal with large-scale marine oil spills more efficiently, emergency materials dispatching algorithm still needs further optimization. The present study presents a methodology for emergency materials dispatching optimization based on four steps, combined with the construction of Chinese oil spill response capacity. First, the present emergency response procedure for large-scale marine oil spills should be analyzed. Second, in accordance with different grade accidents, the demands of all kinds of emergency materials are replaced by an equivalent volume that can unify the units. Third, constraint conditions of the emergency materials dispatching optimization model should be presented, and the objective function of the model should be postulated with the purpose of minimizing the largest sailing time of all oil spill emergency disposal vessels, and the difference in sailing time among vessels that belong to the same emergency materials collection and distribution point. Finally, the present study applies a toolbox and optimization solver to optimize the emergency materials dispatching problem. A calculation example is presented, highlighting the sensibility of the results at different grades of oil spills. The present research would be helpful for emergency managers in tackling an efficient materials dispatching scheme, while considering the integrated emergency response procedure.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Monoarul Haque ◽  
Md Amirul Hassan ◽  
Khaleda Islam ◽  
Md Rijwan Bhuiyan ◽  
Md Shah Jalalur Rahman Shahi ◽  
...  

Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the diet intake pattern and nutritional status of rural population in Bangladesh.Methods: A population based crosssectional study was conducted in three rural villages of Mohespur Upazilla, Jhenaidah district, Bangladesh. Total 200 samples were collected purposively to conduct this study. Data were collected through personal face to face interview by structured and semi-structured questionnaire from the respondents.Results: The mean (± SD) age of the respondents was 35±16.6 years where 64% were male. The monthly dietary intake pattern of the respondents shows that majority of the respondents take pulses, fish, meat, egg, milk and fruits 1 to 2 time per month. Majority (94.5%) of the respondents take cereals 2 to 3 times per day. In case of nutritional status, majorities (47%) have normal nutritional status where 30% are overweight, 15% are obese and 8% are suffering from underweight. Study also shows that there is no relation between gender and nutritional status of the respondents.Conclusion: Finally, this study indicates that the overall dietary intake pattern of rural population in Bangladesh is poor. Further study should be needed in a large scale to explore the real scenario of dietary pattern and nutritional status of rural population in Bangladesh.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/cmoshmcj.v13i2.21065


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