Prioritization of Gas Network Repairs in Crisis Management: A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model

Energy infrastructures, particularly urban gas distribution networks, serve as the lifelines of modern societies, rendering them highly vulnerable to man-made crises such as war and targeted attacks. The occurrence of simultaneous damages at multiple points in the network presents operational and management teams with the complex challenge of prioritizing the allocation of limited repair resources. Decision-making in such conditions is often conducted under severe time pressure and relies on intuitive judgments, which can lead to suboptimal resource allocation and an escalation of the crisis. This research aims to provide a structured, rapid, and defensible approach by proposing a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) framework for prioritizing emergency repairs in gas networks. The model utilizes the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assign weights to four key criteria: ‘Social Impact’, ‘Network Importance’, ‘Affected Population’, and ‘Required Repair Time’. The proposed framework was implemented in a case study of a hypothetical city, ‘Amanabad’, under a war scenario with five damage points. The results demonstrate that the AHP model successfully converted qualitative expert judgments into quantitative weights, providing a transparent and analysis-driven priority list. Analysis of the results highlights the precedence of points with high strategic network importance (e.g., the main city gate station) over those with immediate social impact (e.g., a hospital), which underscores the model’s capability to comprehend the cascading and long-term effects of each decision. This framework can serve as an effective decision support tool in the crisis management rooms of gas utility companies.

کلیدواژه ها:

Crisis Management ، Gas Distribution Networks ، Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) ، Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) ، Repair Prioritization ، Operational Risk