| Projects are fundamental to modern society,with more than one-fifth of global GDP being generated from projects.Project success often has such high stakes that firms and even governments have collapsed after project fails.Since today’s society is very dynamic,including fast technological developments and new types of threats,it is increasingly important that these risk management are proactive.Therefore,to ensure successful project implementation,there has been an urgent need in proactive risk management.Vulnerability analyses provide powerful tools for proactive risk and crisis management,and provide a more proactive and targeted countermeasure for risk response,it is increasing seen as a key step in reducing risk and resisting disaster.However,while there have been some researchers suggested that project vulnerability analyses should be incorporated into project management processes,there have been few studies on project vulnerability.Therefore,the focus of this study is on project vulnerability.To enhance project’s proactive risk management level and ensure the normal operation of overall project,this study applied complex networks to evaluate project vulnerability,expose project’s inherent weaknesses,and analyze the characteristics of project networks’ structural vulnerability from a structural perspective.The main work and contributions of the thesis are summarized as follows:(1)An evaluation method of the project networks’ structural complexity and an analytical framework of the project networks’ structural vulnerability were proposed.Based on the analysis of network characteristics of projects,the project was abstracted as a project network with a set of nodes that represent the tasks and a set of edges/links that indicate the relationships between the tasks.Subsequently,the characteristics of project networks’ structural complexity was combed,after which an evaluation method of the project networks’ structural complexity was proposed based on Bhattacharyya distance.And the method was applied to analyze the structural complexity of two example project networks.Lastly,the correlation between the structural complexity and structural vulnerability of project networks was analyzed,and the analytical framework of the project networks’ structural vulnerability was proposed to define the research topics of this study.(2)An evaluation model of project networks’ structural vulnerability under independent failure modes was established.After the analysis of project networks’ topological properties,network metrics were adapted to assess the structural vulnerability,and the possible associations between the project’s structural properties and vulnerability was explored using Pearson correlation test.Subsequently,the proposed method was applied to an example project.Lastly,three protective countermeasures are presented.This study realized the quantitative evaluation of project networks’ structural vulnerability,can predict the impact of component failures on projects and expose projects’ inherent weaknesses,and the correlation analysis found that the project’s structural properties can provide hints to the identification of the most vulnerable project components.(3)An evaluation model of project networks’ structural vulnerability under cascading failure modes was developed.According to the interdependencies between the nodes,an extended flow redistribution model that takes account of the project’s self-protection mechanism was developed to examine a failure propagation process originates from a single task failure.Subsequently,network metrics were adapted to assess the structural vulnerability,and three attack strategies were proposed to explore project networks’ structural vulnerability under different types of single task failures.Lastly,the proposed model was then applied to examine a project’s structural vulnerability,and targeted protective countermeasures were put forward.The method was very effective in evaluating structural vulnerability,predicting task types that may result in large cascades,and identifying projects’ inherent weaknesses.And it was found that project network have noticeably different structural vulnerability under different types of task failures.(4)An evaluation model of multi-project networks’ structural vulnerability under was built.This paper focuses on the structural vulnerability of parallel type multi-project under independent failure modes.After the analysis of its topological structure and specific features,the parallel type multi-project was abstracted as a network.Subsequently,a novel vulnerability model was designed to calculate the structural vulnerability of parallel type multi-project based on the network characteristics of projects.Then,the proposed approach was applied to a parallel type multi-project to evaluate its structural vulnerability.Lastly,targeted protective countermeasures were proposed for multi-projects.This study can assess multi-project networks’ structural vulnerability,rank the nodes’ vulnerability level,identify the inherent weaknesses in multi-projects.And it is found that the projects with weak interdependencies with other projects were found to be more vulnerable. |
