Author(s): Alessandro Pagano; Raffaele Giordano; Ivan Portoghese; Umberto Fratino; Michele Vurro
Linked Author(s): Umberto Fratino, Alessandro Pagano
Keywords: Water supply systems; Organizational resilience; Extreme events; System Dynamics Modeling
Abstract: The concept of resilience is becoming increasingly important for societies, particularly as far as critical infrastructures are concerned. It is helpful for expressing the ability of complex systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt to and/or rapidly recover from a disruptive event. Fostering resilience of such systems supports in facing disasters, reducing their impacts on assets and services that deserve a strategic importance on the wellness and safety of citizens, such as drinking water supply systems. The number and complexity of features contributing to resilience (structural properties, economy, society, environment, …) as well as their interconnections and mutual interferences, makes such issue particularly challenging. One of the key questions is to identify and assess the influence of measures that can be implemented, contributing to strengthen the resilience of a system. They can be implemented in different temporal phases (preparedness, to‘anticipate’; mitigation, to‘resist’and‘absorb’; response, to‘respond’and recovery, to‘adapt’) ,and should be quantitatively assessed, considering their effectiveness as well as the associated costs and limits. The main objective of the present work is the definition of an innovative approach to resilience for drinking water infrastructures, particularly focused on the role of water utilities and their organizational aspects. Several Italian water utilities (AQP S. p. A, GSA S. p. A. ,AIMAG S. p. A. ), well experienced in the management of extreme events, were involved in model definition. The results were structured by adopting innovative approaches (e. g. SDM) useful to effectively support decision makers.
Year: 2015