Challenges in Resilience Modelling to Support Supply Continuity and Resilience Management Decision-Making

Abstract

The paper provides an overview of the challenges encountered in resilience mathematical modelling within the context of critical infrastructure (CI) protection, supply continuity, and resilience management decision-making. The paper is intended to contribute to the development of the resilience concept, its fundamental building blocks, and its relevant metrics, specifically suitable for risk engineering and sciences. It underlines the varieties of the concepts of resilience used in some scientific disciplines, such as materials science, ecological sciences, and psychological sciences. The use of the resilience concept is still very varied, especially in supporting the services supply continuity in disaster management contexts. An advanced resilience concept should encompass temporality, stochasticity and measurability. Its constituent should cover normalised specifications of disruptive events, critical infrastructure, hazards, vulnerability, robustness, dependencies, interdependencies, and recovery mechanisms. Formal models cannot be conceived without such normalised specifications, since formal models are necessary to design smart tools to support rational and effective decision-making in disaster management and critical infrastructure protection.