Hybrid decision-making method for assessing interdependency and priority of critical infrastructure

The failure of critical infrastructure (CI) can be hazardous to the general population, the economy, and even national security. Disruption to one piece of the infrastructure often affects and causes failure of other dependent infrastructure, which may in turn affect the infrastructure in which the failure originated. These facts highlight the urgent need to understand the interdependencies among CIs to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of CI planning, design and operations. This research proposes a novel method to quantify and define the interdependencies among various components of CI and their priorities respectively, based on expert perspectives. The proposed method, named as Fuzzy-based DANP (FDANP), is a hybrid method that combines the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Analytic Network Process (ANP), and fuzzy logic theory. The FDANP addresses the main issue in a complex network of CI interdependent and important components analysis, which is judged in multi-expert decision making circumstances. Numerical experiments that involve real case data from a former study were carried out to demonstrate the applicability of, and to validate, FDANP. FDANP is superior to the conventional method as it enables a more robust and sensitive exploration of both interdependence and priority in the CI and sub-sectors simultaneously. FDANP effectively captures the dynamics of various expert perceptions within the assessment processes, yielding a more robust analysis result. This research contributes to the evaluation of decision-making that is associated with CI governance, including protection planning, and managing the vulnerability of CI, as well as to increase the resilience of both CI systems and the communities that rely on them.