ABSTRACT
Infrastructure systems provide essential services in any modern societies. These infrastructures form a network of interconnected systems where the failure of some components may trigger the failure of other components or subsystems with potential disastrous failure consequences. The relative new concept of resilience engineering aims at improving the safety of such complex systems. It presents a whole new approach to deal with threats and hazards, thereby maintaining the safety of critical infrastructures.
This chapter presents a review of the state-of-the-art research work on resilience engineering including the definitions, principles, methods, and applications to various systems. The key concepts, methods, and quantitative studies related to critical infrastructure systems are discussed. Finally, a computational framework that integrates human and organizational factors with the dynamic interaction of critical components of the system is presented and applied for the assessment of the resilience of a nuclear reactor.
