Energy systems are regularly subject to major disruptions affecting economic activities, operation of infrastructure and the society as a whole. Resilience assessment comprises the pre-event oriented classical risk assessment as a central element, but it goes beyond that because it also includes and evaluates post-event strategies to improve the functioning of the system during its future operation. First, an overview of resilience definitions used across various scientific disciplines is presented, followed by an in-depth analysis of resilience assessment and quantification for energy systems. The relevant literature is classified by approach and according to four key functions of resilience: resist, restabilize, rebuild, and reconfigure. Findings show that irrespective of the research field, a resilient system always operates with an aim to minimize the potential consequences resulting from a disruptive event and to efficiently recover from a potential system performance loss.

Natural gas covers more than 20% of Europe’s primary energy demand. A potential disruption could lead to supply shortages with severe consequences for the European economy and society. History shows that such a vast and complex network system is prone to exogenous and endogenous disruptions. A dedicated large-scale dataset of the European natural gas network from publicly available information sources is assembled first. The spatial coverage, completeness and resolution allows analyzing the behavior of this geospatial infrastructure network (including consumption) and its components under likely disruptive events, such as earthquakes, and/or technical failures. Using the developed system state simulation engine, the disruption impact is mapped. The results show that storage facilities cannot in all cases compensate for a pipeline disruption. Moreover, critical pipelines, such as the Transitgas pipeline crossing the Alps and the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline bringing natural gas from Northern Africa, are identified. To analyze the pipelines with high impact on the system performance, a detailed scenario analysis using a Monte Carlo simulation resulting in supply grade mapping is conducted and presented for the case of Italy. Overall, it can be concluded that locations with a dead-end, sole supply, and without storage facility nearby, are remarkably exposed to natural gas supply losses.

The Energy-related Severe Accident Database (ENSAD) is the most authoritative resource for comparative risk analysis of accidents in the energy sector. Although ENSAD contains comprehensive, worldwide data, it is a non-spatial database in Microsoft Access format. Therefore, spatial characteristics of the data cannot be fully utilised as well as analysed directly. Based on these premises, a new web-based version of ENSAD with GIS-capabilities – named ENSAD v2.0 – is designed and developed using state-of-the-art, open source technologies. The ENSAD v2.0 consists of two main components, i.e. a spatial database and a responsive web application. For the spatial database, the current accident data are georeferenced and migrated from Microsoft Access, using a tiered approach. The responsive web application can be accessed from desktops as well as mobile devices, and provides both a 2D and 3D mapping platform that is developed on cloud-based, serverless architecture. ENSAD v2.0 also allows assigning different user roles with specific access rights, and a public version with advanced visualisation capabilities has also been developed. Lastly, a case study was carried out using a spatial analysis to visualise the potential impact radius of a natural gas pipeline explosion and to assess its consequences in terms of economic damage and casualties.