Space systems resilience optimisation under epistemic uncertainty

This paper introduces the concept of Resilience Engineering in the context of space systems design and a model of Global System Reliability and Robustness that accounts for epistemic uncertainty and imprecision. In particular, Dempster-Shafer Theory of evidence is used to model uncertainty in both system and environmental parameters. A resilience model is developed to account for the transition from functional to degraded states, and back, during the operational life and the dependency of these transitions on system level design choices and uncertainties. The resilience model is embedded in a network representation of a complex space system. This network representation, called Evidence Network Model (ENM), allows for a fast quantification of the global robustness and reliability of system. A computational optimisation algorithm is then proposed to derive design solutions that provide an optimal compromise between resilience and performance. The result is a set of design solutions that maximise the probability of a system to recover functionalities in the case of a complete or partial failure and at the same time maximises the belief in the desired target value of the performance index. •New approach to Resilience Engineering in space systems engineering.•Efficient use of Dempster-Shafer Theory in Resilience Engineering.•Fast estimation of Belief and Plausibility curves in polynomial time.•New efficient constrained min-max algorithm for worst case scenario optimisation.•Global system reliability model under epistemic uncertainty.