Search results

This paper aims to describe a high-level model portraying the relationships between operational, investment, commercial and regulatory pressures, and reports the early findings from testing alternative strategies, both over the long- and short-term. Concern about the vulnerability of utility networks (electricity, gas and water) and other infrastructures, including transport and telecommunications, to environmental, terrorist and other threats has increased in recent years. This has been motivated both by a perceived increase in such threats and by recognition that the commercial pressures and regulation of companies operating these infrastructures could unintentionally have increased that risk. Powerful simulation tools already help utility operators develop asset investment polices to improve both the performance and resilience of their networks, while others have helped increase their capability to respond efficiently when disruptive events occur. However, these tools need to be further developed to increase understanding of how the interdependencies between operational, investment, commercial and regulatory pressures influence and eventually define the strategic policies available to these organisations and what the long-run consequences will be for the resilience of these systems and hence for service continuity.

Use of system dynamics methods and tools to develop a new approach to strategy and policy development for risk management for organisations operating the critical national infrastructure.

System dynamics is a valid approach to address the problem of understanding risk and developing risk mitigation and management strategies for organisations operating the critical national infrastructure. To develop policies that will effectively manage and mitigate risk in the critical national infrastructure, it is essential to identify and model the interactions and interdependencies between the organisational, investment, commercial and regulatory factors.

The research has developed a proof-of-concept model and set of simulation tools which produce good results using test data from one type of organisation operating in the critical national infrastructure. The model has not been tested using data from other types of organisations. Similarly, the software written in the model has not been tested in operational conditions and further testing will be required.

The model at the moment can only be applied to single organisation. The interactions between organisations are not in scope.

Although some work in the field using simulation tools and methods has been done in the USA, the use of system dynamics and its application to the specific situation on the UK and Europe is new. The model uses earlier work which applied system dynamics to the subject of asset investment planning, but is a major step forward from this work. Risk and resilience is one of the major challenges facing operators of the critical national structure. This work will be of potential value to all these organisations.

Value processes are those high‐level processes which are critical to achieving an organization′s objectives. Describes the re‐engineering of a value process which was not working efficiently and causing serious problems to an important new business operation. Conventional process engineering tools were initially used and, after these had failed to deliver significant improvement, the problem was readdressed using systems dynamics and the i‐THINK modelling tool. Reports, in detail, the authors′ experiences of using systems dynamics together with the results achieved. Describes the models produced, as well as how systems dynamics forced the authors to explore the processes beyond the boundaries identified by the conventional approach. It was in these new areas that the key to the problem and its solution lay. The problem was a case of process invasion by the customer into the supplier′s value process, and the solution identified by simulating the i‐THINK model lay in obliteration of the elements of the process. Comments on the relative merits of systems dynamics with conventional process engineering, and describes plans to continue investigation into other areas of the value process.

Chocolate and cocoa are made from the “beans” or seeds of several small trees, natives of tropical America, of which Theobroma cacao (L.) is by far the most important. Cocoa beans were highly esteemed by the aborigines, especially the Aztecs of Mexico and Peru, who prepared from them beverages and foods. They were brought to the notice of Europeans by Cortez and other explorers, but were not extensively imported into Europe until the seventeenth century, about the time tea and coffee were introduced from the East. At present the world's supply comes chiefly from Venezuela, Guiana, Ecuador, Brazil, Trinidad, Cuba, Mexico, and other regions bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, being gathered in these regions from trees both wild and cultivated; and also to some extent from Java, Ceylon, Africa, and other parts of the Old World, where the tree has been successfully cultivated.