BRIM: Building Resilience Into risk Management

27b429ed-b945-4ebd-b289-0174013e9ecd

Closed

EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC

£2,083,445

March 1, 2016

Nov. 30, 2019

The impacts of recent catastrophic disasters, including the 2013-14 UK winter flooding, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Hurricane Sandy, reach well beyond the immediate, direct structural, environmental and health risks. In a complex system, a localised initial failure may quickly spread to other systems and create "hyper-risks" or "networked risks" through "networks of networks", and cause unpredictable failures in other economic or social networks. Classical quantitative and qualitative risk management frameworks are inadequate for emerging and unforeseen threats. More specifically they cannot handle the uncertainties of low-probability and high-consequence events and of their impacts on environmental, economical and social systems due to high interdependencies between complex systems.

This project will develop a shared, multi-disciplinary vision of how to build resilience into networked risk management for highly complex engineered systems. It will address the challenges encompassed in understanding of complex interdependencies, cascade effects, tipping points of engineered systems. It is expected that this project will engage the community to develop a double helix framework that integrates risk and resilience analysis for complex systems management.

We will organise a series of managed events, such as workshops, sandpits, study groups, which will help frame research questions, develop collaborative projects and disseminate outcomes. We will provide resources for feasibility studies and a number of mechanisms to promote research that focuses on developing novel modelling tools and adaptive frameworks to understand the interdependencies of complex systems and enhance overall system resilience.

Potential Impact:
In addition to the impacts from the proposed project itself, the main tangible impacts will be generated through a number of collaborations to develop novel methodologies and tools of building resilience into networked risk management of critical infrastructure systems. The activities and research results from this project will benefit a wide range of stakeholders in industry, government, and society as described below.

The UK industries including water, transport and power will be the direct beneficiaries. A suite of novel tools and methodologies will be developed to understand cascade effects and interactions of complex systems, and to support decisions on system design and management.

The UK government and regulators will benefit from this research. The government is planning to invest heavily on infrastructure over the next decade, and this includes urban critical infrastructure. The investments need to ensure resilience is built into infrastructure systems to achieve long-term sustainability.

The general public will benefit from critical infrastructure systems that achieve improved services, reduced environmental impacts and increased resilience to weather extreme.