IEEE Reliability Society Technical Operations Annual Technical Report for 2010

The Annual Technical Report this year is focused on infrastructure reliability. Infrastructure constitutes those things that are apparent only in their absence. We take the infrastructure for granted, assuming it will always be there. We turn on our water facet, and drinkable water has always flowed out, for most of us, most of the time. Our infrastructure is subject to environment breakages (e.g., earthquakes), accidents (e.g., dig ups of cables), sabotage, intrusion, and compromise. Also everyday component, software or system failures can bring our infrastructure down. Our global connectivity and communications, as well as our world wide distributed development and maintenance systems, increase our productivity and efficiency, but can also increase our vulnerabilities. Our critical infrastructures can be found in many places.