Academic literature on the topic 'Infrastructure failure'

The emergence of Grid infrastructures like EGEE has enabled the deployment of large-scale computational experiments that address challenging scientific problems in various fields. However, to realize their full potential, Grid infrastructures need to achieve a higher degree of dependability, i.e., they need to improve the ratio of Grid-job requests that complete successfully in the presence of Grid-component failures. To achieve this, however, we need to determine, analyze and classify the causes of job failures on Grids. In this paper we study the reasons behind Grid job failures in the context of EGEE, the largest Grid infrastructure currently in operation. We present points of failure in a Grid that affect the execution of jobs, and describe error types and contributing factors. We discuss various information sources that provide users and administrators with indications about failures, and assess their usefulness based on error information accuracy and completeness. We describe two real-life case studies, describing failures that occurred on a production site of EGEE and the troubleshooting process for each case. Finally, we propose the architecture for a system that could provide failure management support to administrators and end-users of large-scale Grid infrastructures like EGEE.

Urban social life increasingly depends on a functioning social and technical infrastructure. Protecting infrastructures from natural disasters and extreme weather events, which are especially a result of climate change, has become an important topic in international research in the last years [Birkmann et al. (2016). Journal of Extreme Events, 03: 1650017]. In order to increase efficiency, the connections and interrelations between infrastructure components have been strengthened more and more, promoting the growth of large-scale interconnected systems. This in turn has resulted in uncontrollable potential risks as the functionality of each component now depends on an ever-increasing number of other infrastructure components. If one infrastructure component fails, this causes extensive cascades carrying the original failure over to successive components. This can, for example, cause large-scale failures in the rail network due to a shortage of fuel supply in large power plants resulting in impaired grid stability and thus a blackout, which in turn affects communications infrastructure, water supply, and other sectors. The growing complexity of connected infrastructures across multiple sectors and the use of continuously evolving technologies pose great challenges for researchers and providers regarding the prediction of cascading disruptions in the event of a component failure. Cascade modeling is an essential tool for improving the system’s resilience, since the security of the population’s supply is already disrupted when only parts of infrastructure systems are deactivated for test purposes. Accordingly, development and improvement of modeling approaches for the depiction of failure scenarios plays an essential role in planning and operating infrastructure systems. Against this background, we are developing an intersectoral graph-theoretical model framework for cascading failures in large-scale infrastructure systems in order to identify hotspots of high criticality. This work extends the study of criticality as a function of network centrality metrics. Network centrality metrics are applied to the electricity sector to examine and comprehend their correlation. The proposed criticality model for the graph model is then extended to a geographical dependence model. Predicting and analyzing criticality is important to support urban planners in setting up independently operational infrastructure systems and to accomplish the transformation of existing vulnerabilities into resilient adaptive structures.

Abstract Critical Infrastructures failures cause harmful consequences to the population, because they disrupt the supply of necessary goods and services. The failures pose an indirect threat, as they will regularly be triggered by natural hazards, technical failure/human error or intentional acts. In the risk analyses on the national level in Germany, Critical Infrastructure failures are qualitatively described to estimate their impacts on society. Critical Infrastructure Protection is seen as a joint task of many different stakeholders. Rules and regulations with different degrees of compulsion build the framework for their cooperation, and a strategy is in place that promotes the trustful exchange of information among all the relevant stakeholders. The most important stakeholder groups are public authorities, infrastructure operators, and the population. An example is given on how a joint risk management of public authorities and infrastructure operators may be performed, and the cooperation of public authorities and the population is discussed. As Civil Protection covers the entire risk and crisis management cycle with its phases prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, the article ends with examples of the support, which the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and the Federal Ministry of the Interior offer for other stakeholders in order to achieve well-protected infrastructures and, in consequence, well-protected citizens.

Abstract Failure of critical national infrastructures can cause disruptions with widespread economic impacts. To analyze these economic impacts, we present an integrated modeling framework that combines: (1) geospatial information on infrastructure assets/networks and the natural hazards to which they are exposed; (2) geospatial modeling of the reliance of businesses upon infrastructure services, in order to quantify disruption to businesses locations and economic activities in the event of infrastructure failures; and (3) multiregional supply-use economic modeling to analyze wider economic impacts of disruptions to businesses. The methodology is exemplified through a case study for the United Kingdom. The study uses geospatial information on the location of electricity infrastructure assets and local industrial areas, and employs a multiregional supply-use model of the UK economy that traces the impacts of floods of different return intervals across 37 subnational regions of the UK. The results show up to a 300% increase in total economic losses when power outages are included in the risk assessment, compared to analysis that just includes the economic impacts of business interruption due to flooded business premises. This increase indicates that risk studies that do not include failure of critical infrastructures may be underestimating the total losses.

Information infrastructures and resources has become critical component of the modern business and non-business organizations. In turn this dependence makes these organizations vulnerable to any significant failure in their information infrastructures and resources. Literature is full of examples of the companies suffering major losses and even demise as a result of information infrastructure and resources failures. To mitigate this vulnerability the senior management and governance of the organizations needs to pay direct role and attention to protect their critical information infrastructures and resources. This paper provides some results of a study we conducted recently to determine how the senior management of Malaysian business organizations view and control the information infrastructure and resources in their organizations to mitigate vulnerabilities to this critical component of their business organization.

Over the last few years, nexus-thinking has become a buzzword in urban research and practice. This also applies to recent claims of greater integration or coordination of urban infrastructures that have traditionally been managed separately and have been unbundled. The idea is to better address their growing sociotechnical complexity, their externalities and their operation within an urban system of systems. This article introduces a collection of case studies aimed at critically appraising how concepts of nexus and infrastructure integration have become guiding visions for the development of green, resilient or smart cities. It assesses how concepts of nexus and calls for higher interconnectivity and ‘co-management’ within and across infrastructure domains often forestall more politically informed discussions and downplay potential risks and institutional restrictions. Based on an urban political and sociotechnical approach, the introduction to this special issue centres around four major research gaps: 1) the tensions between calls for infrastructure re-bundling and the urban trends and realities driven by infrastructure restructuring since the 1990s; 2) the existing boundary work in cities and urban stakeholders’ practices in bringing fragmented urban infrastructures together; 3) the politics involved in infrastructural and urban change and in aligning urban infrastructures that often defy managerial rhetoric of resource efficiency, smartness and resilience; and 4) the spatialities at play in infrastructural reconfigurations that selectively promote specific spaces and scales of metabolic autonomy, system operation (and failure), networked interconnectivities and system regulation. We conclude by outlining directions for future research.

Water infrastructure development is key to attaining sustainable development, especially for water supply, sanitation and health, agricultural development, and energy production. However, sub-Saharan African countries face specific challenges around infrastructure financing, systemic and repeated malfunctioning, and decentralised infrastructure types. Using Nigeria as a case, this article aims to analyse historical water infrastructure development in Nigeria with a specific focus on dams and standpipes. Seven themes are discussed: infrastructure divisions; deprioritising water supply; political infrastructures; infrastructure failure and sustainability; infrastructure classification and typologies; optimal use of water resources and infrastructure; and a commentary on the future of water infrastructure development. The article concludes with policy and research suggestions for policymakers and other relevant stakeholders.