Analyzing the Risk Criticality of an Infrastructure System on the Community

Abstract

The importance of infrastructure poses significant complexity and challenges to the society under dynamic and uncertain conditions. Current risk assessment methodologies fail to address effectively the issue related to the criticality of risk in a specific infrastructure system. This issue has highlighted the need to understand both the magnitude and impact propagation mechanism of risk. This study develops a novel risk analysis method to analyze the risk criticality among various risks within specific infrastructure in the dynamic manner of stakeholder perceptions towards risk magnitude and impact propagation mechanism. The developed method is the combination of failure mode effect and criticality analysis, social network analysis and fuzzy-set theory in a group decision-making environment to facilitate the building of risk evaluation. The developed method validated in a hypothetical case of urban water supply infrastructure context. The proposed method identifies and measures critical risk at different level of value when comparing a number of hazard events. The risk analysis model developed prioritizes hazard events by considering risk decision factors and impact network analysis to address the risk magnitude and impact propagation mechanism in the context of risk analysis and decision making process. Compared to conventional risk assessment method, the proposed method provides more reliable estimation accuracy, increases decision quality and efficiency in risk management decision making. The empirical demonstration will add a significant insight and new perspective of risk analysis in order to prioritize the critical type of risk.