Application: Resilience Investment and Design for Infrastructure Distribution Networks

Previous network resilience analysis methods have generally focused on either pre-disruption prevention investments or post-disruption recovery strategies. The ability to identify combinations of pre- and post-disruption activities that enhance resilience could provide a more comprehensive approach for designing infrastructure resilience. This application introduces a mathematical model that seeks investment-recovery combinations that minimize the overall cost to a distribution network across a set of disruption scenarios. A set of numerical experiments illustrates how changes to disruption scenarios probabilities affect the optimal resilient design investments.

• Goal
• Develop capability to enhance overall resilience in infrastructure distribution networks that simultaneously considers the impacts of pre-event resilience-enhancing design investments and post-event recovery actions
• Approach/Methods/Models:
• Consider range of investment options for enhancing the network’s absorptive, adaptive and restorative capacities
• Define set of uncertain disruption scenarios
• Create probability distribution of resilience costs resulting from disruption scenarios. Cost categories include:
• REI (Resilience Enhancement Investment): cost of pre-disruption investments
• SI (Systemic Impact): cost associated with decreased network performance
• Total Recovery Effort (TRE): cost associated with cumulative resources expended in network recovery activities
• Select investment combinations that optimize resilience by minimizing total costs

• Status, Accomplishments and Next Steps:
• Concept and model have been developed and tested via five numerical experiments on the test network to demonstrate core ideas about infrastructure network resilience
• Next we will explore specialized solution methods for increased problem size (larger network, more scenarios, more time periods)
• Acknowledgements
  • This work was funded by Sandia National Laboratories’ Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program