Towards a Model-Based Methodology for a Highly Resilient Networked Service Provider System

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The goal of the proposed research is to develop a model-based methodology for a highly reliable and resilientservice provider system. Recently, resilience engineering is emerging to be a new paradigm for safetymanagement. Broadly speaking, resiliency is the ability of a system to prevent or adapt to changing conditionsin order to maintain system safety. To ground this research, telecommunication and water supply systems aretaken as examples. Specific objectives of this research include: (1) Develop a general conceptual object modelfor a networked service system: The model captures the service demand, supply, operation constraint, andstructure, behaviour, principle, and social and human environments; (2) Develop a dynamic model for thenetworked service system: The model captures complex demand and supply flows of a networked servicesystem with respect to time and space; (3) Develop a general methodology for predicting failures of anetworked service provider system, in particular those related to the network connection and cascading effect;and (4) Develop a general methodology for designing and planning a networked service system to preventpredicted failures and thus enhancing the system resilience. In designing and planning, both the demand andsupply entities are considered. That is to say, a design decision could simply be made on reconfiguring thedemand along with reconfiguring the structure of the system and reallocating supply resources.This research, if successfully, will advance our understanding of system resiliency in the discipline of safetymanagement and generate new knowledge in the discipline of engineering design and operations management.Safety is extremely important to Canada. Our national security policy says that there can be no greater role for anation than to protect its citizens. The outcome of this research will greatly enhance the safety of Canada bymitigating and preventing failures in networked service systems - particularly critical infrastructure systems.