Interactive dependency curves for resilience management

Area of Science:

• Organizational resilience
• Supply chain management
• Risk assessment

Background:

• Organizations rely on specific resources for operations, making them vulnerable to supply disruptions.
• Assessing physical dependencies is key to understanding and mitigating risks to business continuity.
• Thorough characterization of dependencies reduces an organization's vulnerability to external operational impacts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To outline a protocol for assessing critical resource dependencies.
• To provide a framework for evaluating resource criticality and backup provisions.
• To introduce a method for visualizing and managing the impact of resource disruptions.

Main Methods:

• Determining the use and redundancy of critical resources.
• Evaluating existing protections, backup equipment, and service arrangements.
• Estimating the impact of service loss, including time to severe impact and operational maintenance capacity.
• Identifying regulatory or policy-driven shutdown requirements due to resource disruption.

Main Results:

• A systematic approach to evaluating resource criticality and vulnerability.
• Identification of key factors for maintaining operations during service disruptions.
• Development of interactive dependency curves for visualizing and managing supply chain risks.

Conclusions:

• Comprehensive assessment of physical dependencies enhances organizational and regional resilience.
• Understanding resource criticality and backup strategies is vital for business continuity.
• Interactive dependency curves offer a valuable tool for anticipating and managing disruption impacts.