A Multistage Stochastic Model for the Management of Flexibility in Infrastructure Systems

Abstract

Flexibility can be an attractive property to add the infrastructure systems during the design phase to reduce the impact of uncertainty. The management of this flexibility, however, is a complicated sequential decision problem that must be solved to extract all the benefits that flexibility may offer. In this paper, a multistage stochastic model is proposed to simulate the flexibility management process. The model combines a novel mathematical representation of flexibility with a set of policies and a scenario-based representation of uncertainty to determine the optimal initial configuration and the optimal flexibility for the system. The results showed that, under specific conditions, flexibility can be a desirable property to add to the system. In addition, the model provides valuable insight about the interaction between system design properties and management policies.