A reliability & risk framework for the assessment and management of system risks in critical infrastructures with central control rooms

Abstract

The submission integrates approaches and major findings generated over the course of our 15-year research project on high reliability management in California infrastructures. The resulting framework identifies issues and variables core to systemwide reliability and risks in critical infrastructures having central control rooms and operating under different standards of reliability (including safety). In this framework, issues of managing system risks follow from logically and empirically prior issues related to managing the system in real time by the infrastructure’s control room according to the systemwide reliability standards in operation. The considerable implications are drawn out for the increasingly important field of risk assessment and management in interconnected critical infrastructures.