2

RESIN Resilient and Sustainable

Infrastructure Networks

3

To create, validate, & apply improved Risk Assessment & Management (RAM) approaches for the high reliability management of resilient & sustainable interconnected critical infrastructure systems (ICIS).

4

• A handbook of practice for ICIS RAM

• An interdisciplinary curriculum for a new RAM-Based field of Inter-Infrastructural Engineering

5

Interdisciplinary researchhighlights differing orientations to risk,

resilience & system definitions for sustainability

requires thinking through risk management at different scales in highly engineered, highly reliable systems before, during & after a disaster

engineering, 30.4%

law, 13.0%

city and regional planning, 21.7%

environmental science, 4.3%

social science, 30.4%

20 researchers 5 disciplines

High Reliability Management is the provision of what society considers to be

critical services safely & continuously, even during peak demand or turbulent times.

As such, you often find HRM in critical infrastructure systems, i.e., those with control rooms for large-scale electricity & water systems, among others.

For the purpose of the RESIN initiative, ecosystem services are critical services and thus require HRM.

What Are Ecosystem Functions & Services?There are many ecosystem functions: regulating

atmospheric chemical composition, temperatures, and precipitation; decomposing organic matter & producing biomass; maintaining balances in carbon dioxide and nitrogen; permitting recovery from natural disturbances; and cycling nutrients, among others.

These functions yield benefits––termed ecosystem services––including commodities (timber, fish, wildlife), specific services (hydropower, biological control, bioremediation), intangibles (preservation of open landscapes, endangered species, “wilderness”), and amenities (places for recreation)

Provisional Findings: 1. Resilience & sustainability at the ICIS level may well

include a different kind or resilience and sustainability than most of us think we know.

This is a resilience where infrastructure managers are able to bounce back from a unpredictable shock or surprise while planning the next step ahead within the ICIS.

This is a sustainability where these managers are able to increase their options to respond to unpredictable shocks or surprises at the ICIS level.

And why are surprises inevitable? Because the chief feature of interconnectivity is surprise and Delta ecosystems—aquatic, agricultural and urban—are exceedingly complex.

The State of Bay-Delta Science 2008 (Healey et al 2008) has as one of its major conclusions:

“The Delta is a continually changing ecosystem,” adding: “From a scientific perspective, changing background conditions means that our measurements of the Bay-Delta system will never converge toward any ‘normal’ values”.

Provisional Findings (continued):

2. RAM must be interactive and involve control room operators and emergency responders across the interconnected critical infrastructures.

How?

Some Possible Answers:--undertake more inter-agency and inter-

infrastructure simulations, e.g., the CALFED real-time gaming exercises

--develop real-time indicators of jointly moving control variables for real-time use in the control rooms of multiple infrastructures

--and…..

…systematically search for better practices being developed outside California for managing ICISs, including but not limited to:

--bringing ecologists and environmental scientists into the control room as real-time dispatchers and support staff.

BUT WHAT ABOUT ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT?

ANSWER: Sadly, the gap between promise & reality of adaptive management could be large:

14