Assessing the capacity of geographical areas facing threats to energy infrastructure from the perspective of passive defense

In recent years, protecting infrastructure, especially critical infrastructure, has become increasingly important because the economy of a region and the well-being of its inhabitants depend on the continuous and reliable operation of its infrastructure. These infrastructures are like arteries for survival of urbanism damaging .Some of infrastructures can have devastating effects on security, economy, and society at the regional and national levels. There are different systems and infrastructures in different countries, including Communication, electricity, gas and oil, banking and finance, transportation, water supply and government services infrastructure, which are critical infrastructures. A review of various types of infrastructures shows that energy infrastructure is more important and plays a more significant role in comparing with other types of infrastructure.Maintaining the security of this infrastructure against attacks and threats is one of the priorities of securing a country. One way to ensure security is to measure the spatial vulnerability of infrastructure. This article assesses the capacity of Yazd province against the vulnerability of energy infrastructure.

The information for this research has been extracted by documentary methods (including books, scientific articles, reports, etc.) as well as using the country's infrastructure database. Then, GIS layers of the energy infrastructure of Yazd province, including electric transmission network, electric plant, gas transmission lines, gas pressure regulation stations, oil transmission lines, oil products transmission lines, oil and gas storage tank and gas stations were examined.The next step was ranking the importance of infrastructure elements with the DEMATEL model. Then, the infrastructure elements of Yazd province were prioritized with the analytic network process(ANP) model. The next step was to prepare maps and GIS layers for each of the infrastructure elements ,by preparing them in Arc GIS and the priorities of the network analysis process model ;sothe final vulnerability map of the province was prepared.

After calculations of supermatrix coefficients, the results show the importance of these infrastructures in providing services to people and other infrastructures, as well astheattractiveness for each infrastructure element. Gas transmission network with the value of 0.1003, oilproducts transmission lines with the value of 0.0988, oil and gas tank with the value of 0.0995, have the most weight and importance, and gas stations with the value of 0.0485 has the least importance in comparing to other energy infrastructures in the Yazd province.The results show that the central part of Yazd province is more vulnerable thanthe other part of province, because moreenergy infrastructuresareestablished inthe central part of Yazd province. Examination of the results on a smaller scale show thatthe vulnerability of energy network infrastructure inYazd,Meybod, Mehriz and Sadooghis high,butinBahabad, Khatam, and Abarkoohis low.

The results show that distribution of infrastructure in the Yazd province has not beenin a good model. The central part of the province is more vulnerable than the peripheralareas so that more than half of the infrastructure of the energy network (55%) is in very vulnerable zone and 18% of the infrastructure is in highly vulnerable zone;thus, observing the teachings of passive defense in the province deserves more importance.