RV-DSS: An industry-friendly resilience-based interdependency assessment tool - case study North Argyll

Project partners: Transport Scotland, Scottish Water, SSE, Atkins and ARU
Partners' Challenge: The increased frequency and magnitude of environmental hazards in Scotland, in the last decade, has resulted in widespread failures in CI networks and their interdependent systems (e.g., devastating impacts of 2002 Glasgow flooding and 2013 storm on Carradale and Kintyre). The challenge currently faced by our industry partners are the lack of shared understanding of interdependencies and interoperability and a robust resilience-informed DSS. To tackle this challenge, this project will adopt recently developed Resilience and Vulnerability-based DSS (RV-DSS) to map interdependent network critical components for a real case study in Scotland.
Aims and Objectives: This project aims to adopt a newly developed DSS to model infrastructure interdependencies of three CI networks (Water, Transport, Energy) providing a measure of network resilience in response to hazardous events, in addition to measure of vulnerability.
Broken down our objectives are to: 1. Apply the RV-DSS to a real case study, North Argyll, providing resilience and vulnerability-informed management strategies and a comparative CBA of pre/post-utilisation of RV-DSS 2. Refine the RV-DSS based on lessons learnt on case study and stakeholders comments. 3. Provide a guideline on building a case study for RV-DSS and engaging stakeholders in utilisation of RV-DSS
Project Plan: The proposed project consists of three Work Packages (WP), three Deliverables (D), two Reports (R), two Workshops (WS) and six Consortium Meetings (M) details of which are summarised below.
WP1 will cover the overall management and progress of the project. This includes organising six consortium meetings and monthly summary-reports, providing project partners with progress being made. This WP will produce two technical reports: R1. Interim report containing project progress, due on Month 3 and R2. Final innovation report: a comprehensive report on project findings and a comparative CBA of pre and post RV-DSS analyses, due on Month 6.
The overall objective of WP2 is to adopt RV-DSS to North Argyll case study, assessing the resilience of transport, water and energy network in response to failure propagation induced by infrastructure interdependencies. This WP will produce two deliverables: D1. Delivering interdependent asset register map for North Argyll, a central data repository for all assets and their functional and physical links in energy, transport and water networks located in North Argyll, in a form of a GIS map (Due on Month 4). D2. Delivering resilience and vulnerability assessment report of North Argyll interdependent infrastructure system, an exemplar of RV-DSS application (Due on Month 6).
WP3 directs lessons learnt from WP2 and stakeholders comments during planned workshops and consortium meetings to refine the RV-DSS to better suit project partners' needs. As part of this WP, a manual for RV-DSS and a guideline on building a case study for RV-DSS will be delivered (D3, Due on Month 6)
Benefits for Project partners: The refined RV-DSS alongside with its manual produced as part of this project can in general help all industry partners to manage future uncertainties in their long-term infrastructure investment decisions. D1 and D2 will provide means of updating current integrated infrastructure design, maintenance and operation methods in North Argyll. D3 will extend the application of these findings to a general case study. The industry-tuned RV-DSS can support project partners in developing an understanding of risk propagation through their systems and also prioritisation of asset management strategies at an organisational level. Additionally, it will play a crucial role in the promotion of road & rail, water and energy industries' services, management and maintenance strategies.
Duration and Total Cost: The project is a 6-month project with the total estimated 80% FEC of £62,339.

Expected benefits: Unlike the available DSSs (e.g., iRoad, Neptune, etc.), RV-DSS provides a measure of network resilience in response to hazardous events, in addition to vulnerability measure. This measure provides a quantitative metric of the robustness, recoverability, rapidity and resourcefulness of the infrastructure network in response to environmental hazards. RV-DSS provides asset owners and managers with resilience and vulnerability-informed (RV-informed) investment choices. By generating a quantitative measure of network vulnerability and resilience, considering infrastructure interdependencies, the most severe failure scenarios and their spatial impacts will be identified. These results could be used to prioritise future business planning strategies (e.g., increasing resources or redundancy levels).

Potential impact on partners: Our project will enable infrastructure operators to streamline strategic planning (e.g., winter preparedness in road and rail networks; use of smart technologies in water networks in response to heat waves) by focusing on risk zones of infrastructure networks (e.g., road and rail infrastructure for Transport Scotland), and improve the resilience of infrastructure systems in response to low probability/high impact environmental events (e.g., interruptions to submarine electricity cables). This tool can provide infrastructure performance patterns in response to hazardous events (e.g., determining whether traffic and congestion patterns in urban areas are a function of rate of precipitation, water networks response to temperature extreme or lightning strikes). Additionally, it can provide an efficiency metric for mitigation and adaptation measures (e.g., SUDS system for road infrastructure). It also provides the means of updating current methods of designs, maintenance and operation in critical conditions (e.g. disastrous events, extensive interdependency-induced asset failures, etc.). For Transport Scotland this provides a means of examining how passengers' access to transport facilities can be managed to cope with more severe weather events. It will also help in examining how road infrastructure design and procurement contracts mitigate environmental risk.
Using resilience-driven decisions will provide key hazard scenarios for use in resilience planning for Scottish Water. This tool can address concerns on managing future uncertainties in long-term infrastructure investment decisions. It will also provide means of understanding how integrated infrastructure design can deliver local and regional economic resilience and recovery in response to extreme environmental hazards and extra value for money where shared interdependencies can be co-managed between sectors.