Publications

Optimal recovery sequencing for critical infrastructure resilience assessment

Vugrin, Eric D.; Brown, Nathanael J.

Critical infrastructure resilience has become a national priority for the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. System resilience has been studied for several decades in many different disciplines, but no standards or unifying methods exist for critical infrastructure resilience analysis. This report documents the results of a late-start Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project that investigated the identification of optimal recovery strategies that maximize resilience. To this goal, we formulate a bi-level optimization problem for infrastructure network models. In the 'inner' problem, we solve for network flows, and we use the 'outer' problem to identify the optimal recovery modes and sequences. We draw from the literature of multi-mode project scheduling problems to create an effective solution strategy for the resilience optimization model. We demonstrate the application of this approach to a set of network models, including a national railroad model and a supply chain for Army munitions production.