(52k) A General Framework for Resilience Assessment of Process Systems

Resilience is essential to ensure the safe and sustainable operation of the processing system. It plays a critical role in enabling operation in remote and extreme environments such as offshore. Resilience is a property of the system that considers the system's absorption, adaptation, and recovery phase in the event of a disruption. This paper proposes a general framework for resilience assessment of processing systems considering three distinct phases mentioned above. These three phases – absorption, adaptation, and recovery are modelled using well-established concepts of reliability and maintainability. Reliability and maintainability are probabilistic assessments of the system's state considering design and operational variables. The occurrence rate of the abnormal condition termed as the failure rate is modelled using the system design variables with covariate consideration.

Similarly, the recovery rate is also modelled using design variables with covariate consideration. The system's absorption and adaptation characteristics are defined using the reliability function, while the recovery characteristic is determined using the maintainability function. Subsequently, these three characteristics are integrated to assess resilience. To enhance resilience, design changes and operational interventions are explored. The proposed framework is explained using the resilience of an autocatalytic reactor. A thermal runaway reaction is modelled for resilience, intervention strategy (adding inhibition) is tested to enhance the resilience of the reactor. The case study confirms the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed framework.