Assessing Resiliency and Sustainability in an Intelligence Infrastructure System

<p>Leaders, military and civilian, have the responsibility to manage effects of catastrophic events and their associated costs for response and recovery which is highlighted by the vulnerability of interdependent infrastructures to natural and technological disasters. With the scarcity of resources, infrastructures must be re-engineered to be more resilient and sustainable over the long term. Therefore, assessments are conducted to increase sustainability. The literature presents different perspectives of sustainability and resiliency and measurement of sustainability with resiliency as the premier state variable which has not been adequately addressed. The purpose of this research is to develop and deploy a systems-based model that quantifies sustainability to an intelligence infrastructure. This research defines intelligence infrastructure sustainability (IIS) as a measure within the context of the resources needed to build and maintain it, at its present state and in the future. IIS is measured by resilient systems': robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity capabilities. An index model was used as the construct for quantifying sustainability. To establish the shape of index functions and importance in the model subject matter experts were queried. Additionally the experts were queried to assess a notional multinational intelligence disciplinary system with emphasizes to each resilient measure. This was accomplished by performing two simulations in the model. The first aggregates the experts' assessments into one assessment. These results became inputs into the sustainability index portion of the model for use in the second simulation, where sustainability is quantified. The results demonstrate sustainability can be quantified and that the results are useful to decision-makers who prefer a quantitative treatment of sustainability for assessing the allocation of resources. This research is a novel contribution to the body of knowledge by providing a method to quantify sustainability to intelligence infrastructure; introducing the theory of sustainability; and specifying the theoretical relationship between resiliency and sustainability. The experts surmise there is applicability in the approach presented in this body of research as it is applied to a multinational intelligence discipline system. Therefore, this body of research may be germane in other infrastructures. The research closes with recommendations for further research.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Bumphus, Shelly Dawn

Contributors dc:contributor

• Resit Unal
• Barry C. Ezell
• Cesar A. Pinto
• Adrian Gheorghe

• Intelligence infrastructure
• Resiliency
• Sustainability
• Systems Engineering

Identifier

9781267890450

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.odu.edu:emse_etds-1170