A Supporting Station Model for Reliable Infrastructure Location Design under Interdependent Disruptions

Abstract

This paper proposes a new modeling method that transforms an infrastructure system with interdependent and correlated facility failures into an equivalent one with an explicit supporting structure. This structure consists of a set of supporting stations that are subject to only independent disruptions with identified probabilities, and thus is much easier to characterize and formulate. Such a supporting structure framework is capable of not only providing a mathematical representation of complex facility failure mechanisms but also physically emulating interdependent infrastructures and their inter-connections in many real-world systems. We examine the properties of this structure and find that it can be used to model a range of heterogeneous and correlated facility failure patterns. A mathematical model built on the supporting structure is created to solve reliable facility location design problems under correlated facility failure risks. This model determines the optimal locations for supporting stations and service facilities to minimize the total system cost including infrastructure investment in the early planning stage and the expected transportation costs and service-loss penalties during the operational stage. This model is formulated into a compact integer linear program and can be efficiently solved by state-of-the-art solvers. A set of experiments and case studies are conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model and to draw managerial insights into the optimal system design.