Designing for Resilience and Protection

Disasters can come in many forms ranging from natural events like floods, pandemics, and earthquakes to human-based disasters like terrorism and accidents like nuclear power plant failures. Because significant disasters do not happen very often, most system planners become complacent about risks, such as major floods and earthquakes. But when one does happen, such as in the case of the Tōhoku earthquake in Japan or the Metcalf Substation attack in California, it is easy to tell when the resilience of a system is inadequate. The value of advanced facility planning and modeling can help reduce the likelihood of incurring substantial losses when disaster strikes. Since the terrorist attack of 9/11, greater attention has been directed to studying facility system vulnerability as well as how a system might be enhanced to have a high degree of resilience. In this chapter, several different areas of facility system design and location are reviewed with the goal of demonstrating some major achievements in this fertile research area as well as outlining specific areas of research need.