Research on Safety Resilience Evaluation Model of Data Center Physical Infrastructure: An ANP-Based Approach

Abstract

With the development of the digital economy, the number and scale of data centers are expanding rapidly. Data centers are playing an increasingly important role in social and economic development. However, a short downtime of a data center may result in huge losses. The safety management of data centers’ physical infrastructure is of great significance to address this concern. We applied resilience theory to the safety management of data center physical infrastructures. We analyzed the resilience connotation and evaluated the system resilience using the resilience indexes. The data center infrastructure was regarded as a system of systems. Through theoretical analysis, the resilience framework of data center infrastructures was established, which formed the main dimensions of resilience assessment. The Delphi method determined the resilience indices, and the ANP method was adopted to set up the evaluation model. The results revealed the important indexes affecting data center infrastructure system safety resilience. Based on the findings, this paper argues for improving redundancy and adaptability, paying attention to the resilience management of energy flow and thermal flow, and establishing an automatic systematic data management system. These suggested measures would not only effectively make contributions to the data center infrastructure safety management theory but also provide an important reference for construction industry practices.

Keywords

• data center infrastructure
• safety management
• resilience
• evaluation system