Vulnerability and Resilience of Networked Infrastructures

Most engineering infrastructure systems such as transportation, water, energy and communications are often described as `system of systems' where damage to a part of the system can have much wider consequences. A system which is vulnerable cannot be robust and resilience requires robustness. The purpose of this paper is present a framework for the assessment of vulnerability and resilience. This makes use of form of the network which combines the topology of the system and the capacity of the connecting links. The analysis leads to a set of vulnerable failure scenarios for which wider consequences can be examined. These are combined with the organisational processes to assess resilience of the system. The approach can be applied to many systems including lifelines. Here it is illustrated through a transport network.