Resilient infrastructure indicators: A review

Disasters, 2014

It has long been recognized that the resilience of any system, whether human or natural, involves the capacity of that system to adapt its structure, although not necessarily function, to a new configuration in response to long-term socio-ecological change. Thus over the long-term, enhancing resilience involves more than simply improving the ability of a system to resist an immediate threat or recover to a stable, past state.

This article reviews the concept of resilience, especially when applied to civil infrastructures, how this concept gained recognition as something of importance, and how it is evolving from a notion to a practical idea.

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2021

Infrastructure systems are inextricably tied to society by providing a variety of vital services. These systems play a fundamental role in reducing the vulnerability of communities and increasing their resilience to natural and human-induced hazards. While various definitions of resilience for infrastructure systems exist, analyzing the resilience of these systems within cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary perspectives remains limited and fragmented in research and practice. With the aim to assist researchers and practitioners in advancing understanding of resilience in designing infrastructure systems, this systematic literature review synthesizes and complements existing knowledge on designing resilient vital infrastructures by identifying (1) key conceptual tensions and challenges, (2) engineering and non-engineering measures, and (3) directions for future research. Here, a conceptual framework is developed in which infrastructures are defined as a conglomeration of interdependent social-ecological-technical systems. In addition, we define resilient infrastructures as systems with ability to (i) anticipate and absorb disturbances, (ii) adapt/transform in response to changes, (iii) recover, and (iv) learn from prior unforeseen events. Our results indicate that conceptual and practical challenges in designing resilient infrastructures continue to exist. Hence these systems are still being built without taking resilience explicitly into account. Our review of measures and recent applications shows that the available measures have not been widely applied in designing resilient infrastructure systems. Key concerns to address are identified as (i) the integration of social, ecological, and technical resilience of infrastructure systems with explicit attention paid to cascading effects and dependencies across these complex systems and (ii) the development of new technologies to identify factors that create different recovery characteristics.

As of February 2019, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has reported since 1880 the average global temperature has increased 1°C, with the warmest year on record being 2016. As the years continue to pass, it is becoming more evident that climate change is occurring, which is known to be a catalyst for climatic weather events. Statistically speaking, these events are more prevalent, and catastrophic exemplified as hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, and fires. In addition to the increase of potentially catastrophic events, society as a whole has become more conscientious in the use and preservation of natural resources, waste generation, and energy consumption. As the overall population continues to grow, the need for safe, secure and sustainable infrastructure increases. Civil infrastructure must be assessed to measure the level at which it will withstand impact from a catastrophic event, as well as how it is utilizing precious resources and energy. In consideration of these previously mentioned issues, several federal agencies, companies, and researchers have put forth an effort to measure and quantify the ability of civil infrastructure to withstand climatic catastrophes. Also, metrics to quantify sustainable construction are increasingly used as a common tool for infrastructure design and development. Most sustainability metrics consider the qualities of a system that revolve around the concept of sustainable development but fail to consider the resiliency of that system. Sustainability assessments are often discrete and will focus on one particular aspect or measure. Resiliency metrics are often overly complex and do not vi fully encapsulate the quality in a way that is pragmatic or useful to practitioners and engineers, or simply neglect sustainable construction methods. Proposed here is a framework that attempts to unify sustainability and resiliency assessment of geotechnical infrastructure, by considering the risk of failure given the probability of a catastrophic event. The framework is developed for use on geotechnical engineered systems, specifically an earthen dam used for flood control. A Bayesian analysis is used to determine the probability of failure given the occurrence of a catastrophic event, in conjunction with both a resiliency assessment, and sustainability assessments. This is to ensure that the sustainability index is jointly dependent upon the changes in resiliency given the occurrence of a catastrophic event. Two separate failure modes that are possible at the location of the earthen dam were modeled to determine the flexibility of the framework. Failure modes include seismic events, and rapid-drawdown and both were modeled with their associated probabilities. Results from the assessment are represented as a single index value that is plotted on a cartesian coordinate system. It is of note that assessment of a particular form of infrastructure mandates analysis of particular failure modes, and changing the system then requires analysis of failure modes to that particular system. In order to fully encapsulate a unified framework for sustainability and resiliency, it was imperative that the thesis provided here focus on one particular infrastructure system, which was chosen to be an earthen dam. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS

S a P I En S Surveys and Perspectives Integrating Environment and Society, 2013

Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings

Sustainable construction has become a growing trend among researchers and stakeholders. Simultaneously, resilience and risk assessments for civil Infrastructures have flourished in terms of importance among researchers, economic sectors, and society. Nevertheless, there is no abundant research that correspond to both approaches, despite that, there are massive similarities and shared characteristics between both investigation branches. Distinctively, this year has demonstrated that sustainable development is directly obstructed by different extreme events that trigger risks and vulnerabilities in civil Infrastructures. These extreme events require a deep and complex study to minimize the impacts they may cause in society and economy, two main factors considered in the study of sustainability. Therefore, when a risk and resilience assessments are conducted, it is already analyzed as a sizable part of sustainability. Consequently, there exists a possibility to create a methodology tha...

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2023

Nowadays, critical infrastructure and systems are getting more and more interconnected, while facing increasing and more intensive hazards: from man-made to natural ones, including those exacerbated by effects of the climate change. The demand for their robustness and resiliency against all these threats is finding ground to organizations or states' ambitions, implementations, and policies. Moreover, their distributed network spanning from local areas to cities, from regions to crosscountry extension, make them a target for malicious actions aimed to damage or even disrupt their critical supplied and therefore the availability of the service they deliver. The paper focuses on a review from an engineering perspective of past efforts (namely those related to the H2020 Secure Gas project) and provides evidence of application cases where the network/system dimension of the critical infrastructure is a key point to be taken into account and to be safeguarded. Finally, an outlook on future perspectives and potentials in the application of resilience at local, urban and territorial/national level is described, with incoming and emerging threats at local and global level.

Reliability Engineering & System Safety

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season resulted in nearly US $200 billion in disruption across the Caribbean and several US states. Several seeming knockout blows to communities will challenge the wisdom and affordability of resilience paradigms that have shaped policy and investment for civil works since Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. With extensive involvement of the public and lawmakers, mid-Atlantic US cities, New Orleans, and nearby coastal communities ultimately, and mostly successfully, opted to use pre-2005 civil works as the blueprint for future investment. Should options of returning to pre-event normalcy be considered for these latest devastated communities? What would gain and what will suffer? While there is continuing priority and commitment for infrastructure systems to be resilient, the theory, science and methodologies to do so will certainly be tested by recent events. Adoption of a resilience strategy by government agencies requires the wisdom of the emerging science of resilience as never before. We describe economic motivations for implementing resilience assessment and management in damaged communities and large scale complex systems. We describe the latest understood principles of resilience that drive a decision framework. We call for examination of risk-based policymaking and investment decisions by the science of resilience.

2016

Rutgers University Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT), in collaboration with research partners within the University Transportation Center (UTC) consortium, seeks to identify knowledge gaps and chart future R&D directions that focus on resilience of and interactions between the critical infrastructure sectors. In particular, lifeline sectors including transportation, energy, communication, water and wastewater, and emergency services are of interest. On December 4, 2015, CAIT hosted a one-day workshop with an aim to develop a roadmap for research priorities based on the emerging infrastructure risks and on the distinct capabilities of the Center partners. Invited participants from public agencies, industry, and universities engaged in facilitated discussions to identify top priorities for building 1) pre-event resilience, 2) characterizing hazard events, and 3) accelerating post-event resilience. Workshop conclusions and a review of published literature indicate key challenges and research opportunities including an improved understanding of interdependencies across critical sectors; establishing robust, implementable resilience metrics, more precise characterization of system vulnerabilities, and prioritization of funding for infrastructure interventions.

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 2011

The concept of resilience is the subject of considerable discussion in academic, business, and governmental circles. It is complex, multidimensional, and defined differently by different stakeholders. The authors contend that there is a benefit in moving from discussing resilience as an abstraction to defining resilience as a measurable characteristic of a system. This paper proposes defining resilience measures using elements of a traditional risk assessment framework to help clarify the concept of resilience and as a way to provide non-traditional risk information. The authors show various, diverse dimensions of resilience can be quantitatively defined in a common risk assessment framework based on the concept of loss of service. This allows the comparison of options for improving the resilience of infrastructure and presents a means to perform cost-benefit analysis.