Abstract

Critical infrastructures (CIs) provide services that are essential to both the economy and well-being of nations and their citizens. Over the years, CIs are becoming more complex and interconnected, they are all interdependent in various ways, including logically, functionally, and geographically. The interconnection between CIs results in a very complex and dynamic system which increases their vulnerability to failures. In fact, when an infrastructure is experiencing failures, it can rapidly generate a cascade or domino effect to impact the other infrastructures. Thus, identifying, understanding and modeling infrastructure interdependency is a new field of research that deals with interrelationships between critical infrastructure sectors for disaster management. In the present research project, an integrated network-based analysis system with a user-friendly graphic user interface (GUI) was developed for risk analysis of complex critical infrastructure systems and their component interdependencies, called FCEPN (Fragility Curve and Extended Petri Net analysis). This approach combines: 1) Fragility Curve analysis of the vulnerability of the infrastructure, based on predefined "damage states" due to particular "hazards"; 2) Extended Petri Net analysis of the infrastructure system interdependency to determine the possible failure states and risk values. Two types of Extended Petri Net, Stochastic Petri Net and Fuzzy Petri Net were discussed in this study respectively. The FCEPN system was evaluated using the Bluestone Dam in West Virginia and Huai River Watershed in China as the case studies. Evaluation study results suggested that the FCEPN system provides a useful approach for analyzing dam system design, potential and actual vulnerability of dam networks to flood related impact, performance and reliability of existing dam systems, and appropriate maintenance and inspection work.