Department Resilience of Maritime Systems
The research and development activities at the Department of Resilience of Maritime Systems focuses on, among others, the safety and security status reached by maritime infrastructures such as offshore farms, ports and ships, and whether this status can be further improved. Over the last century, the complexity of maritime infrastructures has increased dramatically. They now consist of a multitude of technological and socio-technical subsystems, are themselves components in overarching systems, and are influenced in a wide variety of ways by the work, interests and needs of the people involved.
The Institute, in dialogue with a range of stakeholders, has come up with a clear specification of the safety and security goals to be met by maritime infrastructures. These are derived from the original purpose of the infrastructure (e.g. resilient power generation), reflect a variety of security interests (e.g. port security) or represent a proactive response to changing threats (e.g. climate change, criminality and terrorism). The safety of maritime infrastructures is very complex, and is determined by technological, human, organisational, regulatory, legislative and administrative factors, with interdependencies and interactions that cannot be described simply in terms of causal relationships. People must also be taken into consideration in an appropriate manner when devising safety and security measures. With the advancement of resilience implementation and the systemic modelling of safety- and security-related aspects – with all their interdependencies, reciprocal effects and time responses, as well as in their application to maritime infrastructures – the Institute is pursuing the objective of ensuring safety and security efficiently. Thanks to our analyses and the concepts that we have developed, maritime infrastructures will be able to detect negative changes early and independently, allowing them to initiate effective measures to ward off emerging threats, minimise potential damage and enable efficient reconstruction after disruptions.
Our young team of scientists and engineers is looking for other engaged employees (vacancies at the Institute) to implement our planned research and development activities.
Systems Analysis group
The work conducted by this group focuses on analysing maritime infrastructures in terms of the safety and security status that they have attained in their respective system. To this end, models of the infrastructures are being developed on a systemic, functional and process-based level, with the intention of enabling a qualitative and – if possible – quantitative description, specification and validation of the safety and security targets to be reached through statistics and real-time monitoring. The determination of appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs), their parametrisation with real data, and their use for the detection of existing and emergent threats must be developed analytically and methodically. The overall aim is to identify areas that are critical for resilience and to identify technological and socio-technical approaches for improving resilience.
System Design group
Disruptions and attacks are events with causes that may lie within or beyond the limits of the system, and which may impede or even prevent the smooth operation of maritime infrastructures to the desired level of performance. The development work of the System Design group focuses on concepts that use proactive and reactive measures alike to ensure, maintain or even adapt the resilience of the infrastructure system on a systemic, functional and process-based level. A particular challenge when devising and optimising such measures is the detection of resilience-critical sectors and the identification of technological and socio-technical approaches for further improvement of the resilience.
Analysis, Development and Verification Environment group
Maritime infrastructures are complex technological and socio-technical systems. As such, in order to be able to examine internal and external changes – whether intended or unintended – in their interactions, as well as their positive or negative effects, they have to be modelled systemically, functionally and procedurally. Together with the Systems Analysis and System Design groups, the framework to be developed must include the digital twins of the infrastructures in question, on the basis of which a range of safety and security aspects can be analytically and conceptually modelled and assessed. One challenge within this context is the development of parametric models to represent the safety and security status (both statistically and in real time), together with their verification using real data. Such models also form the basis for the situational awareness of maritime infrastructures in real time.