Garill A. Coles

Defining resilience within a risk-informed assessment framework

The concept of resilience is the subject of considerable discussion in academic, business, and governmental circles. It is complex, multidimensional, and defined differently by different stakeholders. The authors contend that there is a benefit in moving from discussing resilience as an abstraction to defining resilience as a measurable characteristic of a system. This paper proposes defining resilience measures using elements of a traditional risk assessment framework to help clarify the concept of resilience and as a way to provide non-traditional risk information. The authors show various, diverse dimensions of resilience can be quantitatively defined in a common risk assessment framework based on the concept of loss of service. This allows the comparison of options for improving the resilience of infrastructure and presents a means to perform cost-benefit analysis.

Use of Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis to Improve Patient Safety

The Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recently approved revisions to their accreditation standards that are intended to support improvements in patient safety and reduce medical errors. Key among these is the requirement to perform a Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) on one high-risk process each year and propose measures to address the most critical failures. Because FMECA was developed for other industries such as nuclear, aerospace, and chemical, some adaptation of its form and use is needed. The FMECA process is normally performed by analyzing each element of an engineered system as represented on a process flow diagram. Medical processes, in contrast, are usually defined procedurally. The key elements of a medical process are more likely to be actions than equipment and components. A community project was put together to develop and test the FMECA adaptation and had good results. This collaboration consisted of safety analysts at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington and the Quality and Performance Improvement managers of the three local hospitals. This paper describes this adaptation.Copyright

A Cyber Security Self-Assessment Method for Critical Infrastructure Protection

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is working with federal-and private-sector representatives to develop a cyber security self-assessment method (the Method) for use in the electric power industry. The Method will assist facility owners in identifying and characterizing cyber vulnerabilities, potential adverse consequences, cyber security risk levels, and cost-effective protection and mitigation measures. The Method supports a comprehensive, expeditious assessment that can be integrated efficiently into normal business practices. Personnel in information systems, plant operations, and security all would contribute to the assessment. The risk assessment stage of the Method evaluates both external and internal threats. In the risk management stage, potential protection and mitigation measures are evaluated based on risk reduction; the costs of purchasing, installing, operating, and maintaining new protection and mitigation measures; and changes in the cost of doing business that may be associated with the implementation of new measures.Copyright

Framework for Evaluating the Impact of Environmental Conditions on Manual Actions

Ensuring successful protection from and mitigation of external floods at nuclear power plants (NPPs) has received increasing attention in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident. Following the incident, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) required all operating U.S. NPPs to identify nonconforming conditions and to verify the adequacy of monitoring and response procedures. Additional NRC initiatives aim to ensure that manual actions, i.e. actions taken outside of the main control room for flood protection and mitigation, are both feasible and reliable. We developed a framework to identify the key components and relationships required for an analytical approach or model to assess the impacts of environmental conditions (ECs) on the ability of individuals to perform flood protection and mitigation manual actions.

Utility of Social Modeling in Assessment of a State’s Propensity for Nuclear Proliferation

This report is the third and final report out of a set of three reports documenting research for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Security Administration (NASA) Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development NA-22 Simulations, Algorithms, and Modeling program that investigates how social modeling can be used to improve proliferation assessment for informing nuclear security, policy, safeguards, design of nuclear systems and research decisions. Social modeling has not to have been used to any significant extent in a proliferation studies. This report focuses on the utility of social modeling as applied to the assessment of a States propensity to develop a nuclear weapons program.