Tag Archives: vulnerability

Highway Vulnerability and Criticality Assessment

Revised on: 2015-09-26

Transportation vulnerability and resilience have been the focus of this blog for the past two days, first looking at Engineering Tranportation Lifelines and then Are roads more important than computers? Today I have a third article that relates to this subject: Assessing the vulnerability and criticality of the highway system. In 2002, AASHTO (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) published a guideline on how to perform such an assessment, and I had almost forgotten about it, but it came back to me when I was researching my two previous posts. What makes this report worth posting about is the clear and distinct separation of the terms vulnerability and criticality.

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Book Review: Managing Risk and Resilience in the Supply Chain

Revised on: 2015-10-14

This book is a gem. To me. Where Helen Peck in her article Reconciling supply chain vulnerability, risk and supply chain management takes a holistic academic perspective on supply chain risk and business continuity, the late David Kaye in his book Managing Risk and Resilience in the Supply Chain takes on a holistic business perspective to explain the concept of the extended supply chain. Seldom have I read a book that captured my attention from the beginning to the end. It is not a textbook for the academic, nor is it a handbook for the manager, but it is an easy read.

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Transportation reliability and vulnerability

Revised on: 2015-09-04

This is a philosophical essay on transportation vulnerability, where three fields or subjects are brought together : engineering (reliability and vulnerability), economics (cost and benefits) and politics (decision making). The idea behind the research is to blend statistical, economical and political arguments in order to achieve a novel and unifying framework for decision making within transportation planning. By adding reliability and vulnerability to the traditional equations of costs and benefits it is hoped that transportation planners and professionals will not only consider economical arguments, but also dare to take on political statements that may be in opposition to strictly factual costs and benefits.

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Assess the vulnerability of your production system

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

So far I have reviewed “international” literature and web sites, and it is only fitting that now it is time for the Norwegian “domestic” literature to be reviewed. Assess the vulnerability of your production system was written back in 1997, by Bjørn Egil Asbjørnslett and Marvin Rausand, both now high-profile academics within risk analysis in Norway.

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Three steps to make your supply chain less vulnerable

Revised on: 2011-05-06

Some time ago, Jeff Karrenbauer, CEO of Insight Inc., a top international provider of supply chain planning solutions for the world’s foremost companies, wrote an article on How to Audit, Analyze, and Mitigate Supply Chain Vulnerability. The article makes a strong case for every CEO of any company to demand a comprehensive supply chain risk audit and a corresponding set of mitigation strategies immediately and wait until after disaster strikes only to realize that “we should (or could) have known better”. To make the supply chain more resilient, businesses need to do more than just think about the problem; they must prepare to act effectively.

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Book Review: Supply Chain Risk Management

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Revised on: 2011-03-12

This excellent book by Donald Waters, Supply Chain Risk Management: Vulnerability and Resilience in Logistics, offers a comprehensive overview of many important issues in managing supply chain risk. More than 15 case studies and a straightforward hands-on practical approach make this book an enjoyable read. I bought this book as a text book, and as such it does a great job. It is perhaps not so well suited for the academically inclined, or for researching supply chain risk, or perhaps it is indeed, as it lets you not forget the real world and its real problems.

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Why we need to think the unthinkable

Revised on: 2010-09-22

Immediately after September 11, 2001, “critical infrastructure” and “vulnerability” seemed to be the new buzzwords. More recently “resilience” has been added to that list, and for a good reason. In a business sense, resilience is the ability to recover from any unforeseen event and how quickly one can return to normal day-to-day operations. Probably the most vulnerable and most critical infrastructure in our time are global computer networks, such as the Internet.

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The Swedish Road Network – Vulnerable or not?

Revised on: 2015-09-09

The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden KTH is in the finishing stages of a research project aiming to develop the methodology for vulnerability analysis of road networks that can be used for decision-making concerning investment and maintenance measures. At the forefront is Erik Jenelius, a young researcher and PhD-student, who is breaking new grounds in the way we should think about road vulnerability and how to mitigate it.

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How New Zealand develops resilient organisations

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Is New Zealand better prepared for a disaster than other countries? As our infrastructure and organizations become ever more networked and interdependent there is a growing need to focus on managing overall system risk. In particular, there is a need to focus not only on the vulnerability of our systems to failure, but also on our ability to manage and minimize the impact of any failures. New Zealand has realized this and is currently halfway through a six year research project designed to assist organizations in recovering their economic competitiveness after hazard events.

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Is Your Supply Chain Vulnerable?

Revised on: 2011-03-10

Recently I came across a report on Supply Chain Vulnerability published as early as 2002 by the Cranfield University School of Management on behalf of the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Home Office. The key findings from this research report into supply chain vulnerabilities are quite interesting.

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How to disrupt a supply chain

Revised on: 2011-02-25

This is a brief description of a model I developed for supply chain risk and vulnerability, with risks and disruptions on one side and the vulnerability and impacts on the other side: A typical supply chain consists of a company with incoming raw materials from an upstream supplier and outgoing products to a downstream customer, and is characterized by its locational and organizational design. There are many potential disruptions to a supply chain that may or that may not influence locational decisions. And finally, the impact and severity of disruptions depends on both locational vulnerability and organizational adaptability

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Cost-Benefit Analysis – an essay about valuation problems

Revised on: 2011-07-21

This paper introduces vulnerability as an important parameter for decision-support in cost-benefit analyses for transportation projects, by seeking to establish a link between the terms reliability and vulnerability vis-à-vis costs and benefits. The paper contends that a reliable transportation network represents a net benefit to society, and conversely, that a vulnerable network represents a net cost to society. Vulnerability costs or disruption costs are related to both location on and usage of the transportation network, and methods to explore these costs are suggested.

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The vulnerability of road networks in a cost-benefit perspective

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Revised on: 2011-01-05

A reliable transportation network represents a net benefit to society, and conversely, a vulnerable network represents a net cost to society. Hence, vulnerability ought to be an important parameter for decision-support in cost-benefit analyses, in order to establish a link between the terms reliability and vulnerability vis-à-vis costs and benefits. A multi-criteria analysis approach is suggested as an appropriate methodology for analyzing the monetary and non-monetary effects of vulnerability. Looking beyond the science of vulnerability assessments, this paper discusses some of the network attributes that influence the vulnerability of transportation networks, influences that can be described as structure-related, nature-related or traffic-related attributes. The influences of the individual attributes are then examined as possible candidates for measuring of the vulnerability of the transportation network.

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Reliability and vulnerability versus costs and benefits

Revised on: 2011-03-10

Looking beyond the science of vulnerability assessments, this paper discusses some of the network attributes that influence the vulnerability of transport networks, influences that can be described as structure-related, nature-related or traffic-related attributes. The paper introduces vulnerability as a parameter for decision-support in cost-benefit analyses, by seeking to establish a link between the terms reliability and vulnerability vis-a-vis costs and benefits.

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Reliability and vulnerability versus costs and benefits

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Revised on: 2015-09-09

Issues of reliability and vulnerability are mormally not considered a matter of evaluation in traditional cost-benefit analyses. Consequently, traditional cost-benefit analyses are lacking decision variables that may be important. This paper looks beyond the abstract science of vulnerability assessments, and discusses some of the factual influences and network attributes that contribute to the vulnerability of transport networks. The influences of the individual attributes are then examined as a measure of the vulnerability of a transport network. Although reliability can be defined by absolute numbers, vulnerability, by its very nature can not. The paper further outlines a framework for developing a methodology that to incorporate reliability and vulnerability as parameters for decision-support in a cost-benefit analysis. In doing so, this paper seeks to establish a link between the terms reliability/vulnerability and cost/benefit and seeks to describe reliability and vulnerability in terms of cost and benefit. Cost-benefit evaluations are part of many decision making processes, and it is argued that vulnerability assessments likewise should play an important role as input to these processes.

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The reliability and vulnerability of transportation lifelines

Revised on: 2015-11-17

How can we assess how reliable or vulnerable the transportation is, and which parameters can we apply in measuring reliability and vulnerability? Transportation networks like freeways and interstate highways are the main backbone of modern society. Consequently, the reliability or vulnerability of any transportation network is thus a decisive factor not only in terms of market outreach and competition, but also in terms of continuity, to ensure a 24/7 operation of the community we live in. This research essay takes a closer look at vulnerability and reliability issues in transportation networks.

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