Vulnerability and Resilience: How to assess, prepare, and deal with major disruptions

INFORMS Railway Applications Section 
Vulnerability and Resilience: How to assess, prepare, and deal with major disruptions
Speaker: Dr. Christopher Szymula, University of Technology Dresden

Resilience and vulnerability are two fundamental concepts when dealing with disruptions. Vulnerability is the snapshot of our system in worst-case situations. Resilience captures the total system behaviour over time (i. e., disruption, reaction, recovery). With increasing pressure on our railway systems both concepts are becoming more relevant to railway operators and infrastructure managers. Increasing demands drive high network utilizations, whilst ageing infrastructure, extreme weather, and other disruptive events drive increasing numbers of disruptions; forcing operators and managers to deal with disruptions on a regular basis. To address this issue, the research community needs to assess past disruptions and disruption-preparedness of current systems, and find ways to anticipate during planning and actual management. This talk discusses some recent approaches, and also leaves room to discuss on how to get better prepared for future challenges.