Energy Systems and Comparative System Assessment

Today, a wide spectrum of energy technologies, including centralised, decentralised, fossil, renewable and nuclear, may be affected by technical failures, human failures, intentional attacks, and natural hazards.

This research cluster focusses on the resilience of energy supply, while extending analysis to supply chains of different energy sources. By studying critical scenarios across different infrastructure systems, the analysis can be extended to other sectors beyond energy.

This cluster complements the work of the 'Social and Behavioural Factors in Decision Making' research cluster, which seeks to make energy systems more robust and resilient by dampening demand.

Research modules include: 

1. Assessing and Measuring Energy System Resilience  module will compare accident risks across a broad range of current and future energy supply chains and assess the performance of the entire energy supply chain and areas of weaknesses, as well as explore methodologies to support planning under uncertainty. 
   
2. People and Operations in Resilient Systems module will analyse critical scenarios to identify equivalent tasks, working contexts, and reference reliability values across sectors such as energy, transport, and distribution networks; and investigate ways to increase system reliability, resulting in the development of an economic model that determines the best way to design, deploy, and strategically manage systems in spite of uncertainties.