SIRA: A Methodology for Lifeline Infrastructure Vulnerability Analysis

https://github.com/GeoscienceAustralia/sira
Release: 0.1.0

SIRA stands for Systemic Infrastructure Resilience Analysis. It represents a methodology and supporting code for systematising vulnerability analysis of lifeline infrastructure assets to natural hazards (i.e. infrastructure system response to environmental excitation).

The impact assessment is incorporates the fragilities of individual system components and their topological configuration within the infrastructure system under study. This analysis is supplemented by an assessment of the post-hazard system functionality through network flow analysis, and consequent restoration times and costs.

The primary focus has been on studying responses of infrastructure facilities (e.g. power generation plants, high voltage substations). The data models, scenario specification options, and the codebase have been extended to allow the same methodology to be applied to modelling geospatially dispersed networks along with facilities (e.g. electricity transmission networks and substations).

Limitations: At the time of writing this documentation, the software has been tested to work with earthquake hazards only. However, the methodology and class structure have been developed to make the modelling process hazard agnostic. The hazard specification process and infrastructure models are designed to allow for expansion to different hazards and arbitrary infrastructure sectors/assets.

SIRA is being developed in Geoscience Australia (GA) in support of the agency’s strategic priority to contribute to enhancing the hazard resilience of communities in Australia and its region.

Features

Open Source: Written in Python, avoids dependency on proprietary tools, platform agnostic.

Flexible Infrastructure Model: The data model is based on graph theory. All infrastructure systems are represented as networks. This allows an user to develop arbitrarily complex custom facility models – for a facility or a network – for impact simulation.

Extensible Component Library: User can define new instances of component_type (the building blocks of a facility or network) and link it to existing or custom fragility algorithms.

Component Criticality Analysis: Scenario Analysis tools allow users to identify the cost of restoration for chosen scenarios, expected restoration times, and options for targeted component upgrades that yield greatest improvements to system resilience.

Restoration Prognosis: Users can experiment with different levels of hazard intensities and post-disaster resource allocation to gauge restoration times for system operations.