CAREER: Reliability Assessment and Risk Mitigation Principles for Smart Interdependent Infrastructure Systems

这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER计划项目）的研究目标是开发超越基础设施系统分析标准方法的概念。 例如，传统的复杂系统的可靠性评估仅限于连通性分析，而本研究将专注于新的基于流的可靠性方法来捕获相互依赖的流拥塞和级联故障动态。 为了完成智能网络的系统级分析和性能预测，PI将引入瞬时可靠性的概念，该概念依赖于来自实时监控设备的基础设施状态数据的可用性增加。 瞬时可靠性将通过在每个时间点推断控制基础设施性能的参数的概率分布来量化（例如，故障率、恢复时间、耦合强度、危险率和需求波动），以及识别更有可能将交互基础设施驱动到不可靠状态的网络组件的类型和位置。 从这些时空分析的见解将使功能驱动的设计和风险缓解指南的发展，以不断实现地理上分布的系统的统一性能。 该职业计划的研究和教育部分将推进包括电力、水、天然气和电信系统在内的相互作用网络的科学，并形成管理老化公用事业和部署不断发展的城市中心的设想智能系统的工程师。工作的完成将为基础设施系统用户、利益相关者和学生带来重大利益。 通过从当前系统状态和过去趋势中学习的即时评估工具，服务可靠性预测将成为可能。 新工具将通过预测系统故障和优化维修人员的调度，促进网络运营和应急响应。此外，管理当局将能够采用规定最低相互依赖可靠性标准的设计准则。 此外，该项目具有培养下一代土木工程师的强烈教育理念，并招募女性和少数民族设计和运营智能基础设施。 通过为莱斯大学的本科生/研究生实施一种新的学习范式，即基于网络的知识，学生将接触到算法计算和数学的平衡组合，这被认为是现代网络科学的基石。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER Program project is develop concepts that go beyond standard methods for infrastructure system analysis. For instance, traditional reliability assessment of complex systems is limited to connectivity analysis, whereas this research will focus on novel flow-based reliability methods to capture interdependent flow congestion and cascading failure dynamics. To accomplish system-level analyses and performance forecasting of intelligent networks, the PI will introduce concepts of instantaneous reliability that rely on increased availability of infrastructure state data from real-time monitoring devices. Instantaneous reliability will be quantified by inferring at every point in time the probability distributions of the parameters that govern infrastructure performance (e.g., failure rates, restoration times, coupling strengths, hazard rates, and demand fluctuations), as well as identifying the type and locations of network components that are more likely to drive interacting infrastructures into unreliable states. Insights from these spatio-temporal analyses will enable the development of functionality-driven design and risk mitigation guidelines to continuously achieve uniform performance in geographically distributed systems. The research and education components of this CAREER plan will advance the science of interacting networks, including power, water, gas, and telecommunication systems, and form the engineers that will manage aging utilities and deploy the envisioned intelligent systems of growing urban centers.Completion of the work will bring significant benefits to infrastructure system users, stakeholders, and students. Service reliability forecasting will be possible with the instantaneous assessment tools that learn from current system states and past trends. The new tools will facilitate network operation and emergency response by enabling anticipation of system failure and optimal dispatching of repair crews. Also, regulatory authorities will be able to adopt design guidelines that impose minimum interdependent reliability standards. In addition, this project has strong educational ideas to nurture the next generation of civil engineers, and recruit women and minorities for designing and operating smart infrastructures. By implementing a new learning paradigm for undergraduate/graduate students at Rice University, referred to as network-based knowledge, students will be exposed to a balanced combination of algorithmic computation and mathematics, which are considered the cornerstones of modern network science.