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This technical report summarizes research that has produced an optimization-based decision support system for assessing the resilience of the Marine Transport System conveying coal in the Port of Pittsburgh area. We describe waterside data with the throughput and storage capacities of locks, pools, and transfer points; landside data with road and rail capacities; a set of coal contracts (i.e., grade of coal, source, destination, quantity, and delivery date); and some policy costs for using these alternate conveyances, and perhaps suffering some shortage. An “operator’s model” is presented that uses this data to emulate the best cost-minimizing policy to operate this Marine Transport System. This operator’s model is then manipulated to emulate loss of key components and evaluate the best possible system response, where it may be necessary to transfer from the least-expensive, waterborne barge conveyance to rail and/or road transport, and it may be necessary to allocate shortages among system customers. Systematic evaluations lead to a “resilience curve” for the system. Generalizing, simultaneous loss of sets of components can be modeled, as can the effects of defending certain components, rendering them invulnerable to attack. The final product, a Defender-Attacker-Defender optimization system, can advise the best use of a given defensive budget, where an attacker will observe these defensive preparations and alter his plans accordingly, and the operator, observing losses due to attacks, responds as best able to operate the surviving infrastructure. This system can be applied without change to any other Marine Transport System conveying any set of commodities as flows through a transport network, although considerable effort may be required to develop the appropriate input data and then run the model to perform the analysis Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. |
