1. Failures of Technological Systems
GROUP III
Marija Ilic

2. Case studies: Nuclear plant failures
Electric power system blackouts (hidden failures caused by malfunctioning of distributed protective systems)
COMMON FEATURE: LOW PROBABILITY, POTENTIALLY HIGH SEQUENTIAL IMPACT EVENTS DEVELOPING WITHIN A HUMAN ENVIRONMENT
INTERDEPEDENCIES WITHIN THE HETEROGENEOUS ENVIRONMENT (SEVERAL SYSTEM TYPES: PHYSICAL, INFORMATION AND PEOPLE)

3. Conceptual challenge
Identify issues/methods which could have helped prevent cascading failures triggered by these low probability events
To do this, one needs to
-Pose the complex problem of interest
-Provide comprehensive IT-supported models for determining severity of the situation (for example, mode of normal, alert, emergency)
-Develop IT-supported decision strategies/control for managing similar events in the future

4. Problem posing/modeling
Type of models (empirical and/or analytic)
Function of regulatory policies (self-organizing or fully regulated, or partially regulated)
Comprehensive (family) of models of various level of complexity for various purposes (depending on the time scale of interest, mode of operation, tradeoffs between publicly available information and information restrictions)
Information availability (sensors) and criticality (temporal, value); information integration; margin estimates

5. Decision Strategies and Control for Complex Systems Under Uncertain Conditions
Multi-criteria problems for complex technological systems interacting with social dynamics
Stochastic control problems with human, policy, economic feedback
Level of coordination under local decisions
End-user as an active participant in reducing the severity of the situation
Need: Flexible IT-supported value-based protocols for implementing differentiated reliability (different interruptions at the value)