Assessing Response System Capabilities of Socio-technical Systems
Author
Summary, in English
Our society is becoming more and more dependent upon the reliable function of a number of vital socio-technical systems. These systems are often being referred to as critical infrastructures, or lifeline systems, indicating their importance for supporting a nation’s economy and social well-being. In the present paper a method is presented for assessing the capability of those actors involved in restoring socio-technical systems after strains affecting its technical systems. Parallel ongoing work by the authors, not presented here, emphasises on
technical systems’ interdependencies. Together, these approaches address the issue of vulnerability analysis of socio-technical systems. The presented method is derived from the theories of both systems thinking and resilience engineering. The method has been applied in a preliminary study of a socio-technical system, namely the Swedish railway system. The
method systematically identifies the system elements by evaluating the system both under normal operation and under strain. The actors directly involved in the restoration of the technical system, referred to as the response system, are identified and selected for in-depth studies. The overall objective of the study is to assess the time required for the response system to restore the technical system after strains of varying magnitude, by introducing the concept of response curves. The curves reveal response system capabilities and their limits, i.e. the magnitude of strain for which the actors can no longer cope. It is concluded that the proposed method is both applicable and valid in the efforts of assessing response system capabilities of socio-technical systems.
technical systems’ interdependencies. Together, these approaches address the issue of vulnerability analysis of socio-technical systems. The presented method is derived from the theories of both systems thinking and resilience engineering. The method has been applied in a preliminary study of a socio-technical system, namely the Swedish railway system. The
method systematically identifies the system elements by evaluating the system both under normal operation and under strain. The actors directly involved in the restoration of the technical system, referred to as the response system, are identified and selected for in-depth studies. The overall objective of the study is to assess the time required for the response system to restore the technical system after strains of varying magnitude, by introducing the concept of response curves. The curves reveal response system capabilities and their limits, i.e. the magnitude of strain for which the actors can no longer cope. It is concluded that the proposed method is both applicable and valid in the efforts of assessing response system capabilities of socio-technical systems.
Department/s
- Division of Fire Safety Engineering
- Lund University Centre for Risk Assessment and Management (LUCRAM)
- Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
- Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation
Publishing year
2009
Language
English
Pages
469-480
Publication/Series
Proceedings of TIEMS 2009 Annual Conference Istanbul, June, 9th – 11th
Document type
Conference paper
Topic
- Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering
- Building Technologies
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
- Other Civil Engineering
Keywords
- Critical Infrastructures
- Socio-Technical
- Resilience
- Response System
- Railway
Conference name
16th TIEMS Annual Conference, 2009
Conference date
2009-06-09 - 2009-06-11
Conference place
Istanbul, Turkey
Status
Published
Research group
- LUCRAM (Lund University Center for Risk Analysis and Management