1,721,052 research outputs found
A simulation-driven cyber resilience assessment for water treatment plants
No full textDigitalization is increasingly characterizing modern industrial assets: cyber-physical components allow for greater efficiency, coordination, and quality, but also open to new disruption scenarios with potentially disastrous impacts. In this context, a systematic risk management process should be in place to encompass system’s physical and informative properties. Consequently, cyber resilience is meant to evaluate not only the possibility of failures related to the physical part of industrial items, but also anomalies of - and attacks against - their cyber counterparts. This research investigates cyber resilience of a water treatment system via a simulation model. A digital twin of a water desalination plant has been developed in MATLAB/Simulink along with a custom Simulink block to reproduce cyber attack’s actions. Dedicated resilience metrics are computed to assess system’s cyber resilience. The metrics are defined merging two approaches: (i) a deterministic approach that considers the outputs of the physical process model; (ii) a probabilistic approach that considers fluctuations of cyber-attacks’ duration and impact, and variability of system response and recovery capacities. The results provide evidence on the need for cyber-physical inspired modelling within modern industrial plants to identify criticalities, and design corrective actions
A taxonomy of interactions in socio-technical systems: A functional perspective
Full text linkAlthough the modelling of interactions has long been at the core of socio-technical systems theory, and is a key for understanding resilience, there is a lack of a holistic taxonomy of interactions. This study introduces a taxonomy of interactions to be used in association with the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM). The taxonomy has nine criteria: nature of agents, output nature, levelling, waiting time, distance, degree of coupling, visibility, safety and/or security hazards, and parallel replications. For each criterion, two descriptors are proposed: what the interaction looks like; and - when applicable - the variability level of the interaction. The use of the taxonomy is presented for three systems with clearly distinct complexity characteristics: cash withdrawal from an ATM, teaching a university course, and manufacturing operations. These case studies indicate the usefulness of the taxonomy for the identification of leverage points in work system design. They also show the value of modelling the variability of the interactions in FRAM models, in addition to the traditional modelling of the variability of the outputs of functions. Implications of the taxonomy for resilience engineering are discussed
Reviewing qualitative research approaches in the context of critical infrastructure resilience
Full text linkModern societies are increasingly dependent on the proper functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs). CIs produce and distribute essential goods or services, as for power transmission systems, water treatment and distribution infrastructures, transportation systems, communication networks, nuclear power plants, and information technologies. Being resilient becomes a key property for CIs, which are constantly exposed to threats that can undermine safety, security, and business continuity. Nowadays, a variety of approaches exist in the context of CIs’ resilience research. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review on the approaches that have a complete qualitative dimension, or that can be used as entry points for semi-quantitative analyses. The study aims to uncover the usage of qualitative research methods through a systematic review based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). The paper identifies four principal dimensions of resilience referred to CIs (i.e., techno-centric, organisational, community, and urban) and discusses the related qualitative methods. Besides many studies being focused on energy and transportation systems, the literature review allows to observe that interviews and questionnaires are most frequently used to gather qualitative data, besides a high percentage of mixed-method research. The article aims to provide a synthesis of literature on qualitative methods used for resilience research in the domain of CIs, detailing lessons learned from such approaches to shed lights on best practices and identify possible future research directions
Business intelligence for IT governance of a technology company
Full text linkManagers are required to make fast, reliable, and fact-based decisions to encompass the dynamicity of modern business environments. Data visualization and reporting are thus crucial activities to ensure a systematic organizational intelligence especially for technological companies operating in a fast-moving context. As such, this paper presents case-study research for the definition of a business intelligence model and related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to support risk-related decision making. The study firstly comprises a literature review on approaches for governance management, which confirm a disconnection between theory and practice. It then progresses to mapping the main business areas and suggesting exemplary KPIs to fill this gap. Finally, it documents the design and usage of a BI dashboard, as emerged via a validation with four managers. This early application shows the advantages of BI for both business operators and governance managers
Corrigendum to “Defining the Functional Resonance Analysis space: combining Abstraction Hierarchy and FRAM” (Reliability Engineering and System Safety (2017) 165 (34–46) (S0951832016302514) (10.1016/j.ress.2017.03.032))
No full textThe authors regret that in the above article, the words inter and intra have been misused for analyzing the multi-layer framework originally
presented in the article itself.
p. 34, abstract, line 12 intra-agent inter-level and intra-agent intra-level --- inter-agent intra-level and inter-agent inter-level
p. 38, line 16 intra-agent inter-level or intra-agent or intra-level analysis --- inter-agent intra-level and/or inter-agent inter-level analyses
p. 38, line 18 inter-agent intra-level --- intra-agent inter-level
p. 39, heading of paragraph 4.3 intra-agent inter-level --- inter-agent intra-level
p. 39, heading of paragraph 4.4 intra-agent intra-level --- inter-agent inter-level
p. 43, label of Fig. 7 intra-agent inter-level --- inter-agent intra-level
p. 43, line 1 intra-level --- inter-level
p. 43, label of Fig. 8 intra-agent inter-level --- inter-agent intra-level
p. 44, label of Fig. 9 intra-level --- inter-level
p. 44, line 21 intra-agent inter-level and intra-agent intra-level --- inter-agent intra-level and inter-agent inter-level
The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused
Learning from incidents: A supply chain management perspective in military environments
Full text linkSupply chain management (SCM) represents a crucial role in the military sector to ensure operation sustainability. Starting from the NATO handbook for military organizational learning, this paper aims at investigating the link between technical inconveniences and sustainable supply chain operations. Taking advantage of the learning from incidents (LFI) models traditionally used in the risk and safety management area, this paper proposes an information management system to support organizational learning from technical inconveniences in a military supply chain. The approach is discussed with reference to the Italian context, in line with international and national standards for technical inconvenience reporting. The results of the paper show the benefits of adopting a systematic LFI system for technical inconveniences, providing related exemplar business intelligence dashboards. Further implications for the generalization of the proposed information management system are presented to foster a healthy and effective reporting environment in military scenarios
Supporting weather forecasting performance management at aerodromes through anomaly detection and hierarchical clustering
No full textWeather forecasting is a critical factor for aerodrome and enroute flight operations. Airport decision-makers rely on assessments made by forecasters to ensure operations safety and optimize flight schedule despite potential adverse weather conditions. This manuscript suggests a novel methodology based on Machine Learning to detect forecasting anomalies in historic data, and to rely on them for anticipating potential threats in aerodrome future forecasts. The methodology is fed with historic bulletins from radars and with previous forecasts, which are then processed via an anomaly detection algorithm, and a hierarchical clustering algorithm. While the former algorithm spots anomalous data points, the latter is used to group sets of similar forecasts. The joint usage of the results allows calculating an error propensity metric, which can predict the expected tendency of a certain forecast to be inaccurate. The methodology is meant to enhance decision makers in managing aerodrome weather forecasting, understanding criticalities related to their accuracy levels
The chimera of time: exploring the functional properties of an emergency response room in action
No full textEmergency response (ER) planners have developed plans either under "all-hazards" approach, focusing on a full spectrum of emergencies or under a specific scenario—in which planning underlines aligned actions to respond to a particular situation. Either of them represents the so-called Work-As-Imagined (WAI) operation. However, the growing complexity, the scope of emerging situation and the level of uncertainty, create unpredicted challenges for ER operation, which represent another variety of work named Work-As-Done (WAD). These challenges require different degrees of adaptation to avoid the cascading impacts of an event into an accident, or even a disaster. Drawing upon the traditional Functional Resonance Analysis (FRAM), we provide a novel FRAM representation, which reflects adaptive capacities on functional inter-relationships, and their evolution over time in different scenarios. Rather than using time as an aspect of the FRAM hexagon in its traditional sense, we propose an explicit time-dependent analysis. We outline how to make the chimera of time response feasible in ER operations and how to represent respective sources of success. Based on our FRAM approach, we conduct an incident analysis referred to an event that happened in Gjøa in 2017, in Norway at the North Sea, to understand adaptation in the four different ER phases, that is mobilizing, alert/warning, combat and normalization
Performance-based analysis of aerodrome weather forecasts
Full text linkWeather forecasting is a critical aspect for optimizing aerodrome operations. It allows ensuring on-ground and en-route safe and efficient air traffic management. Being a continuous and mandatory operation for aerodrome systems, it routinely produces large amounts of data. This paper suggests a customized performance-based analysis of weather forecasts accuracy in line with ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards. The analysis is instantiated into operational settings of a Euro-pean Weather Service Provider (WSP), and its implications for operations of an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), by means of exemplary data intelligence reports including accuracy indicators. The analysis is meant to support decision makers in managing aerodrome weather forecasting gaining knowledge from past operations
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