Modeling of Interdependent Infrastructure Systems

Olenia Chen Tong Tong

Abstract

Economic progress and advances in technology have markedly increased the interconnectedness and interdependencies of nations' critical infrastructures, such as info communication system, energy system, logistic & transportation system, water resource system, financial system, etc. There is therefore an urgent emerging need to better understand and advance the art and science of modeling complexity and of interdependent complex system. This is evident from the increasing vulnerability of these critical infrastructures to natural disasters as well as terrorism.

In this project, we first conduct a study of the various forms of interdependency in complex systems. We then conducted a comparative study on the suitability of techniques for modeling interdependent complex systems. A comparative evaluation model based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process was developed to compare seven modeling techniques using nine criteria. The modeling techniques compared are Leontief-based Input/Output Model (IIM), Network Flow Approach, Small World, Scale-free Networks, System Dynamics, Multi-layer Infrastructure Networks, Hierarchical Holographic Modeling (HHM), and Fault Tree/ Bayesian Networks (FT/BN).

With the results from the above comparative study, the HHM, IIM, and FT/BN techniques were then selected to model the vulnerabilities to disruption of a fictitious petrochemical network, taking into consideration essential process flows, production plants and amenities in the system.