8. Resilience by Teaming: Internal Resource Network Design, Flow Management, and Resource Control Protocols

Supply network agents transform flow received from their predecessors into output flow by executing a series of internal processes. These agents require a set of internal resources \(r \in R_{a}\) which are oftentimes arranged in a network configuration under central control of agent \(a\). Internal resources are classified in processes, i.e., resources that transform local input flow into local output flow, and storages, responsible for temporal stowage of flow to balance flow rate fluctuations. Internal resource network resilience can be enabled by design and flow control protocol decisions. As found among reviewed articles in Sects. 4.​3.​1 and 4.​3.​2, resilience can be built-in by embedding excess capacity and storage. However, these strategies entail one-time costs, e.g., equipment purchase and installation, and operation costs, e.g., energy consumption and maintenance, and need to be utilized efficiently to increase resilience in a sustainable manner. To this end, the principle of Fault-tolerance by Teaming from CCT lays the foundation to leverage weaker, thus less costly, resources to achieve a performance equal to, or better than, that achievable by a single flawless, and costlier, resource. Team formation in internal resource networks (IRNs) is influenced by parameters selected at the design stage and decisions made in real-time based on available status information. Design choices define limits to the ability of flow control protocols to re-parameterize an IRN in order to protect resources at risk of disruptions. The following sections present design guidelines and a flow control protocol to achieve resilient operation of internal resource networks.