Infrastructure Interdependencies - - The Environment

In the context of infrastructure interdependencies the word "environment" refers to the setting or surrounding versus the natural world.  Infrastructures operate in an environment described not only by their individual inputs, outputs, and states, but also by the characteristics of other infrastructures and certain general concerns.  The infrastructure environment is the framework in which the owners and operators establish goals and objectives; construct value systems for defining and viewing their business; model and analyze their operations; and make decisions that affect infrastructure architectures and operations.

Seven areas need to be reviewed and discussed in the context of infrastructure interdependencies.  These are:

1. Economic and Business Opportunities - - Deregulation and technology innovation have had major influences on system interdependencies.  Deregulation, especially in the energy sector, has resulted in the shedding of excess capacity that had previously been mandated and had served as a shock absorber against system failure.  Information technology provided business with a powerful business tool to increase efficiency - - but it subsequently led to the proliferation of cyber interdependencies (and new vulnerabilities) in most infrastructure.
2. Public Policy - - Various policies shape how industry and various levels of government operate but bounds the set of permissible operational states and characteristics and influence the growth and structure of entire infrastructures.
3. Government Investment Decisions - - Research, development, and acquisition decisions have had a wide-ranging influence on many aspects of our lives and culture, ranging from the creation of entirely new infrastructures to small nudges of existing infrastructures.  A more pressing issue we currently face is a lack of investment and the impact on potential system failures.
4. Legal and Regulatory - - Some legal and regulatory concerns directly affect infrastructure operations.  The Telecommunications Act of 1996 had a significant impact and influence on infrastructure architectures and topologies.
5. Public Health and Safety - - The desire to protect lives, property, and public health/safety has directly affected the configuration and operation of the infrastructures and thus their interdependencies.  Examples include a reliance on SCADA and other electronic systems.
6. Technical and Security - - Technology is both an enabler of infrastructures and a primary source of interdependencies.  Technology is largely responsible for the tightly coupled, interdependent infrastructure we enjoy today - - extensive automation has dramatically increased cyber interdependencies across all infrastructures and concurrently increased their complexity.  However, tighter, more complex, and more extensive interdependencies lead to increased risks and greater requirements for security.
7. Social and Political - - These concerns drive markets (economic, business, technical, and security) and elections (public policy, legal/regulatory, and technical).  They create the perception that laws or regulations are needed (or not), a service is needed (or not), certain types of behavior are accepted (or not), and certain protections are needed (or not).

"Lousy" Infrastructure

Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell discusses the state of our public infrastructure with The New Yorker's George Packer at the following link:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currents/2010/11/edward-rendell-george-packer.html

Infrastructure Interdependencies - - Introduction

This week I will be addressing the need for engineers to identify and understand the critical infrastructure interdependencies that exist in a broad spectrum of our systems.  By infrastructure I am referring to the physical assets that are capable of an intended service delivery, comprising of rigid assets such as buildings, roads, bridges, and facilities, as well as flexible assets such as utilities and facilities related to water, sewage, power, etc., including their systems and machinery. 

The current and pressing issue is the notion that our infrastructure are highly interconnected and mutually dependent in complex ways, both physically and through a host of information and communications technologies.  Identifying, understanding, and analyzing such interdependencies are significant challenges.  These challenges are greatly magnified by the breadth and complexity of our critical infrastructure.

Infrastructure interdependencies means a bi-directional relationship between multiple different infrastructures in a general system of systems through which the state of each infrastructure influences or is influenced by or correlated to the state of another.  A good example is energy and water - - the two systems are interdependent.  Energy and power production require water - - thermoelectric cooling, energy minerals extraction/mining, and emissions control.  Water production, processing, distribution, and end-use require energy - - pumping, transport, treatment, and use of conditioning.  For example, 20% of the total energy use in California is for water transportation, treatment, and use.  We can expect growth in energy and water interdependencies - - future energy development will put new demands on water development.  Many new technologies will be more water intensive - - the hydrogen economy would require even more water and water constraints will grow for energy development and power plant siting.  Future water supplies and treatment will be more energy intensive - - readily accessible fresh water supplies are limited and have been fully allocated in some areas and new technologies to access and/or treat non-traditional water resources will require more energy per gallon of water.

Steven M. Rinaldi probably explains this best with his "Six Dimensions" graphic for describing infrastructure interdependencies.  The six dimensions are:

1. The Environment - - Comprising concerns that influence normal system operations, emergency operations during disruptions, periods of high stress/repair, and recovery operations.
2. Coupling and Response Behavior - - The degree to which the infrastructures are coupled, or linked, strongly influences their operational characteristics.  Some linkages are loose and flexible, whereas others are light, leaving little or no flexibility for the system to respond to changing conditions.
3. Type of Failure - - Interdependencies increase the risk of failures or disruptions in multiple infrastructures.  The subtle feedback loops and complex topologies created by interdependencies can initiate and propagate disturbances in a variety of ways that are unusual and difficult to foresee.
4. Infrastructure Characteristics - - Infrastructures have key characteristics that figure in interdependency analyses.  These characteristics include spatial, temporal, operational, and organizational dimensions.
5. State of Operation - - The state of operation of an infrastructure can be thought of as a continuum that exhibits different behaviors during normal operating conditions, during times of severe stress or disruption, or during times when repair and restoration activities are underway.
6. Types of Interdependencies - - Interdependencies vary widely and each has its own characteristics and effects on infrastructure agents.  This includes the following four principal classes - - physical, cyber, geographic, and logical.

It is important for engineers to understand that key technological, economic, and regulatory changes have dramatically altered the relationships among infrastructures and the information technology revolution has led to substantially more interconnected, and complex infrastructures with generally greater centralization of control.  To quote Mr. Rinaldi - - ". . . the trend toward greater infrastructure interdependency has accelerated and shows little sign of abating."

Your Inner Rooster

Bob Brennan is the president and CEO of Iron Mountain, a firm which provides information storage, protection, and management services. He writes the following about what qualities he is trying to get at in an interview:

I'm trying to understand how self-centered they are. It's really hard on organizations when people in power throw their weight around. That creates an unsafe environment for collaboration. It breeds defensiveness. I'm trying to understand, if I'm interviewing you, whether you're a rooster. And if you are a rooster, can there be other roosters on the porch with you? If not. I don't care how talented you are, I really don't want you on the property.

Coach K's Tips

After their national championship season last year - - Duke is back again as the #1 ranked college basketball team. Mike Krzyzenwski, the legendary Coach K of the Duke program, writes about leadership in Leading With The Heart (2000) - - his guide to successful strategies for basketball, business, and life. Coach K has the following tips:

• It's important for a leader to focus on the technical details of his industry or business. But it's vital to focus on details related specifically to people in the organization.
• People talk to you in different ways - - through facial expressions. moods, mannerisms, body language, the tone in their voice, the look in their eyes.
• As a leader, you must be able to read your players.
• A leader has to be positive about all things that happen to his team. Look at nothing in the past as failure.
• You cannot win every game. But you can learn from every game.
• It takes courage not only to make decisions, but to live with those decisions afterward.
• A leader has to have the courage to make a key decision in a split second.
• Courage and confidence are what decision-making is all about.
• Don't let a single game break your heart.

Check out ESPN's Greatest Coach On The Planet debate - - http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5846363

The Ability To Model

Everything engineers do involves some form of modeling - - from graphic models to mathematical models to mental models. We model the interaction of what we think we know about complex systems and our experience of the real world - - and this can be a profoundly humbling experience. Our ability to model the world is poised on a fundamental duality. Engineers know a tremendous amount about how the world works, but not nearly enough. Our knowledge is amazing; our ignorance even more so. The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance - - almost is the revelation of ignorance.

The late Donella H. Meadows, is her outstanding book Thinking in Systems (2008), writes the three truths of models and reality:

1. Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head - - my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world.
2. Our models usually have a strong congruence with the world. That is why we are such a successful species in the biosphere. Especially complex and sophisticated are the mental models we develop from direct, intimate experience of nature, people, and organizations immediately around us.
3. However, and conversely, our models fall far short of representing the world fully. That is why we make mistakes and why we are regularly surprised. In our heads, we can keep track of only a few variables at one time. We often draw illogical conclusions from accurate assumptions, or logical conclusions from inaccurate assumptions. Most of us, for instance, are surprised by the amount of growth an exponential process can generate. Few of us can intuit how to damp oscillations in a complex system.

Thanksgiving by the Numbers

We are expected to cook 46 million turkeys Thanksgiving Day. Each turkey requires approximately 1,600 gallons of water over the bird's life-cycle - - our collective "turkiness" consumes 74 billion gallons of water. One-third of our birds will be cooked in a gas oven. We will burn up 2.35 billion cubic feet of natural gas today, or 4% of all the gas that the U.S. uses on an average day.