The reliable functioning of infrastructures is critical to national security and fundamental to social, economic, and environmental well-being. This CRISP project will advance our understanding of the effects of different types of interdependencies on the resiliency of critical infrastructures (CIs), targeting water, transportation and cyber infrastructures. Instead of focusing on different infrastructures, this project focuses on different interdependencies including physical-based (primarily co-location), virtual-based (primarily information), and socioeconomic-based (primarily resource management). The project will enhance the resiliency of interdependent critical infrastructures and transform infrastructure management by the integrative decision framework developed for the evaluation of design, operational and organizational strategies. The integrated research and education provides a fun self-learning environment and wide dissemination of project findings and products through the interactive website hosting the competition-based learning game.
The objectives of this project are to: 1) develop and validate models considering physical-based and virtual-based interdependencies and examine the infrastructure resiliency associated with design strategies; 2) develop an integrated mathematical model considering socioeconomic-based interdependencies and examine the infrastructure operational strategies; 3) understand influential factors and organizational strategies in managing critical infrastructures; 4) develop a multi-method adaptive simulator for high-level stakeholders to identify/quantify the failure impacts and potential strategies for addressing failures; and 5) develop a Resilient Infrastructures Learning Game (RILG) for public participation and dissemination to build awareness, knowledge, and capacity for recognizing interdependencies among critical infrastructures. The projected framework uses a hybrid system dynamics and agent-based modeling approach to integrate outcomes from different methods including: multi-layer network modeling (focus: design aspects of CIs); infrastructure prognostic and health management taking into account the physical, virtual, and socioeconomic-based interdependencies among infrastructures and considering both continuous degradation of performance measures and the discrete occurrence of critical events (focus: operational aspects of CIs); and consensus analysis and Monte Carlo simulation of decision making outcomes (focus: organizational aspects of CIs). The alternative infrastructure design, operational and organizational strategies will draw from the models and organizational resiliency studies using surveys and interviews. A simulation game platform will be developed to allow different teams of students and practitioners to evaluate their developed strategies by weighing associated transaction costs.
