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Project Director

Objective

• Vulnerability, robustness, and risks of critical infrastructures such as electricity, gas, water, logistics, and communications will be assessed and visualized considering their interdependence.
• Methods for comprehensively assessing resilience, which represents the recoverability of a system, and for supporting judgments in recovery planning of critical infrastructures will be developed.
• Based on the above outcomes, propositions will be made for supporting the government to make policies for resilience improvement, and to design institutions for emergency response.

Outline

Having experienced the multiple disasters of the Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, it is necessary to make and implement concrete and comprehensive crisis management policies considering the interdependence between critical infrastructures in order to improve the resilience of our nation. From this perspective, we will perform the research project outlined below.

• Modeling and simulation of critical infrastructures
  A modeling method of critical infrastructures considering their interdependence and a simulation system of complex infrastructures will be developed. Vulnerability and robustness analysis will be done to study cascading phenomena in complex infrastructures and the results will be visualized. A method of comprehensively generating threat scenarios, which are the premises of the vulnerability and robustness analysis, will be studied based on the scenario deliberations.
• Comprehensive assessment of resilience and decision support
  The criteria and metrics for quantitatively evaluating the resilience of critical infrastructures will be studied while considering the multiple viewpoints and interests of various stakeholders. A method will be developed for optimizing recovery plans of critical infrastructures based on the criteria and using the simulation technology developed in the first stage. A scenario library will be created for supporting infrastructure operators and the government to make decisions in emergency response.
• Comparative study of policies and institutions for social safety
  A key issue for systematic policy-making for the safety of our community and society is how we can improve the resilience of society by correctly recognizing interdependence between critical infrastructures, which include facilities, systems, sites, networks, and services essential not only for our everyday life but also for the continuity of national functions and the economy. To this end, we will conduct a review of present situations and structuring of key issues for emergency response, the organizational and institutional design of emergency response functions, and policy-making and institutional design for improving the resilience of critical infrastructures.