System resilience modeling and assessment based on minimal paths

Resilience is the ability characterizing an engineering system to recover rapidly after disruptions from inside or outside the system. Resilience is realized on the basis of fixed strategies and resources, beyond which the resilience is changing in essence. This paper proposes the definition of system resilience limit, as well as the definition of system resilience concerned with resilience limit. Then the system resilience is modeled and evaluated involved with the minimal paths. Finally, the method is verified with respect to a network system with the help of Monte Carlo simulation. The method proposed in this paper is proved to be efficient in assessing system resilience, and is useful for the decision-making and optimization of resilience strategies.