Resilient–vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructure, key resources, assets, and facilities

Nations are built to depend on critical infrastructures, key resources, assets, and facilities (CIKRAFs), hence the need to effectively analyse inherent vulnerabilities, to build and develop adequate protection and resilience capabilities. The purpose of this study is to develop a model that measures and quantifies a threshold vulnerability, called the resilient–vulnerability, comprising of protection and resilience measures, as this article asserts that resilient–vulnerability is systemic and measurable using the resilient–vulnerability model (RVM). The RVM, which requires input data from subject matter experts (SMEs), is deployed to a typical natural gas pipeline system, with data uncertainty catered for, through data aggregation and simulation, leading to the emergence of a resilient–vulnerability index (RVI). Summary findings reveal that the three subsystems, namely production and processing, transmission and storage, and distribution, all, respectively, scored 56, 59, and 52%, compared to the ideal possible score, leaving an entire system score of 64% of ideal conditions of protection and resilience. The results indicate the usefulness of the RVM to owners and operators of CIKRAFs, with the RVM supporting the quantification of the resilient–vulnerability of structurally decomposable CIKRAFs, and the comparative baseline index RVI supporting the security and resilience profiling of all similar CIKRAFs.