System Resilience Evaluation and Optimization Considering Epistemic Uncertainty

Epistemic uncertainties, caused by data asymmetry and deficiencies, exist in resilience evaluation. Especially in the system design process, it is difficult to obtain enough data for system resilience evaluation and improvement. Mathematics methods, such as evidence theory and Bayesian theory, have been used in the resilience evaluation for systems with epistemic uncertainty. However, these methods are based on subjective information and may lead to an interval expansion problem in the calculation. Therefore, the problem of how to quantify epistemic uncertainty in the resilience evaluation is not well solved. In this paper, we propose a new resilience measure based on uncertainty theory, a new branch of mathematics that is viewed as appropriate for modeling epistemic uncertainty. In our method, resilience is defined as an uncertainty measure that is the belief degree of a system’s behavior after disruptions that can achieve the predetermined goal. Then, a resilience evaluation method is provided based on the operation law in uncertainty theory. To design a resilient system, an uncertain programming model is given, and a genetic algorithm is applied to find an optimal design to develop a resilient system with the minimal cost. Finally, road networks are used as a case study. The results show that our method can effectively reduce cost and ensure network resilience.