Quantifying the importance of elements of a gas transmission network from topological, reliability and controllability perspectives, considering capacity constraints

Abstract

In this work, we analyze a natural gas network with the objective of identifying its most critical elements.The methodological approach undertaken in this paper is based on topological network analysis. Several perspectives of analysis are considered to complete the analysis: topological, reliability and controllability. For each perspective, an indicator is computed to quantify the importance of each network component. This analysis enables quantitative evaluations of the gas network and the identification of the role of each component with respect to different perspectives. A comparative evaluation of these perspectives is performed to complete the analysis by investigating the consistency and inconsistency between these perspectives. A benchmark network based on a real EU gas transmission network of several countries is taken as reference to present the development of the analysis. The findings in this paper show the interest of different perspectives of analysis on such a critical infrastructure and the necessity of taking into account physical characteristics such as pipeline capacity constraints.