A resilience assessment simulation tool for distribution gas networks

Energy networks, especially the ones of natural gas, electric energy and district heating, are crucial infrastructures for the everyday life of our countries and cities. Thus, resilience and security of networks are becoming increasingly critical issues due to: a) the vulnerability of the territories, b) the effects of climate change (e.g. landslides, floods) and/or natural events (e.g. heartquakes) and c) cyber and terrorist attacks. In recent years, more attention has been paid to transmission networks rather than to urban distribution ones, although important consequences in terms of economic and public health damages can arise for urban distribution networks too. In this paper, the authors propose a resilience assessment methodology for natural gas distribution networks. The methodology allows simulating fault conditions in the network leading to quality of service issues (e.g. methane dispersion in the atmosphere, prolonged service interruption) and to disservices (e.g. disrupted final users). In such way, it could be possible to define effective operational management strategies to reduce the risk of service disruption and to increase the network resilience evaluating structural network improvement measures. The proposed methodology has been experimented in a case study of a real distribution network and the results show it is possible to avoid or minimize the risk of service.