Session

The last decade has demonstrated that designers, managers, utilities and government agencies have been challenged in addressing a variety of vulnerabilities facing their facilities and infrastructure systems, including:

Natural Disasters – Weather-related storms, floods and fires
Intentional Attacks – Physical (terrorism) and cyberattacks
Material/Component Failures – Manufacturing defects, deterioration due to age and wear
Biological/Pandemic – Interruption of medical supply chains, commerce, and transportation
Human Error – Programming complexity and/or lack of experience and training

Interdependencies between systems and infrastructures often leads to the potential for cascading failures, creating catastrophic consequences. When assessing the various threats, risk assessors need to address a balance evaluating reliability, resiliency, security, sustainability and energy efficiency.

These assessments have led to various sustainability and resiliency rating systems allowing owners to develop formal resiliency plans and standards, many leveraging resiliency planning as a strategic asset.

This presentation will explore the government’s measures to protect critical infrastructure, evolution of several resiliency metrics, and examples of various design and implementation strategies for including resiliency in projects and systems.