Human conflict, geopolitical crises, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters can turn large parts of energy distribution networks offline. Europe's current gas supply network is largely dependent on deliveries from Russia and North Africa, creating vulnerabilities to social and political instabilities. During crises, less delivery may mean greater congestion, as the pipeline network is used in...

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 left many evacuees with insufficient food and emergency shelter. However, there is no evidence concerning the factors affecting dietary circumstances in emergency shelters after disasters. To clarify the factors that influenced the provision of meals, we reanalyzed a data set from a dietary survey conducted in emergency shelters one month after the Great ...

A large mixed-integer linear program (MILP) and a much smaller nonlinear programming (NLP) approximation of the MILP, involving simulation and response surface estimation via regression analysis, are proposed to solve the problem of the optimal selection of natural gas supply contracts by local gas distribution utilities. Each potential supply source is characterized by several price and nonpri...

The paper presents a probabilistic model to study security of supply in a gas network. The model is based on Monte-Carlo simulations with graph theory, and is implemented in the software tool ProGasNet. The software allows studying gas networks in various aspects including identification of weakest links and nodes, vulnerability analysis, bottleneck analysis, evaluation of new infrastructure et...