Foundational infrastructure framework for city resilience

2018

This paper addresses the interwoven relationships between a city’s physical infrastructure and the dependence on its reliable functioning by societal systems. Physical failure of our infrastructure tests the vulnerabilities of the social, cultural, and economic systems that comprise a city. Numerous frameworks offer guidance for addressing how cities can be more resilient, sustainable, and/or livable. Without recognizing the dependency of all systems on a properly functioning built environment, these frameworks only provide partial solutions. For example, if a system was not reliable under normal operating conditions, what is the point of recovering? This paper reviews three sustainability and resiliency frameworks for the extent to which they address reliable infrastructure. The Envision rating system focuses on the sustainability of infrastructure projects. The STAR Community rating system and Rockefeller Foundation’s City Resilience Framework address broader community systems thr...

CSS Risk and Resilience Report, 2015

Today, continually increasing population densi¬ties within urban areas are compounding social and in¬frastructural complexity. At the same time issues such as global economic interdependence and environmental change are creating or exacerbating vulnerabilities that sit along a broad spectrum of risks and threats, which can be concentrated or diffuse, fast or slow-moving. In the face of such shifts, the role of establishing, enhancing or maintaining resilience in the urban space has become an exceedingly important, though difficult task. In this report we examine resilience in the urban space, focusing on critical infrastructure resilience and its interdependent relationship with critical social infra¬structures (CSI), which include services such as health services, insurance, relief organizations, etc., that often help communities cope with the impact of critical infrastructure disruptions.

International journal of sustainable materials and structural systems, 2021

In this paper, basic concepts of resilience, ecology and sustainability are introduced first. Then, associated performance metrics and interdependency of critical infrastructure systems are presented and discussed. Moreover, the importance of big data (BD) and data mining (DM), as emerging themes in this field, is discussed. Other relevant issues such as how to foster decision making and accountability to plan for any expansion in resilience services, resources, and the associated performance metrics and interdependency of critical infrastructure systems are presented. It is the recommendation of this study that due to the difficulty and complexity of resilience, and its definitional ambiguity, the ability to assess such a concept helps to bridge the gap between

2018

Application of the concept 4.9 Conceptual resilience components useful for the analysis of critical infrastructure Differentiation of vulnerability and resilience components in context to place-based assessments of Critical Infrastructure Narrow conception of resilience useful for operationalisation 4.10 A concept for a place-based assessment in urban areas or regions concerning their critical values, infrastructure services and most vital elements Main findings of chapter 4 'Conceptual Model and Methods Used in This Study' 5. CASE STUDY-EX-ANTE RISK AND RESILIENCE ASSESSMENT OF AN URBAN AREA USING GIS: COLOGNE AREA 5.1 The Conception and Methodology Methodology 5.2 Results of the Assessment 5.3 Discussion of case study results 5.4 Conclusions Main findings of chapter 5 'Case study' 6. SYNOPSIS AND PERSPECTIVES OF AN EMERGING RESEARCH FIELD 6.1 Synopsis of the work presented in this volume 6.2 Additional Perspectives for this field Integrative resilience concepts Contributions to disaster risk management and governance Incentives for the critical infrastructure and urban resilience nexus: Minimum supply concept Context and contribution to (German) geographical risk research Final conclusion-urban disaster resilience and critical infrastructure-a new thematic research field

List of figures 6 List of tables 6 List of abbreviations 6 1 INTRODUCTION 7 1.1 Introduction 8 1.2 Urban and infrastructure resilience in theory and policy practice 9 1.3 An institutional perspective on the governance of urban and infrastructure resilience 19 1.4 Research aim, research questions and thesis outline 20 1.5 Research design and methodology 23 2 URBAN AND INFRASTRUCTURE RESILIENCE: DIVERGING CONCEPTS AND THE NEED FOR CROSS-BOUNDARY LEARNING 27 2.1 Introduction 28 2.2 Knowledge communities and cross-boundary learning 29 2.3 Methodology 31 2.4 Knowledge communities with regard to urban and infrastructure resilience 33 2.5 Discussion 39 2.6 Conclusion 42 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS BUILDING URBAN AND INFRASTRUCTURE RESILIENCE THROUGH CONNECTIVITY: AN INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT IN CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND 61 4.1 Introduction 62 4.2 The need for institutional connectivity in order to achieve urban and infrastructure resilience 63 4.3 Methodology 66 4.4 Risk management in Greater Christchurch: Institutional reforms before and after the 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence 67 4.5 Discussion: Institutions, connectivity and resilience 75 4.6 Conclusion 77 MAINSTREAMING URBAN RESILIENCE IN CHRISTCHURCH AND ROTTERDAM? 79 5.1 Introduction 80 5.2 Mainstreaming urban resilience: Political commitment, governance networks and active engagement of decision-makers and citizens 82 5.3 Rotterdam and Christchurch as participants in 100RC: Problems of mainstreaming urban resilience 85 5.4 Discussion: Mainstreaming urban resilience requires more than participation in 100RC 92 5.5 Conclusion 94 CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS 97 6.1 Introduction 98 6.2 Summary of results 99 6.3 Institutional arrangements and the governance of urban and infrastructure resilience 103 6.4 Reflections and outlook 109 References 113 Appendices 133 Appendix 1: Overview of interviews-Chapter 3 (Rotterdam) 133 Appendix 2: Overview of interviews-Chapter 4 (Christchurch) 135 Appendix 3: Overview of interviews-Chapter 5

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.

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.

The ability to measure resilience critically depends on the underlying conceptual framework that guides the analysis. Yet, in contrast with its popularity in policy-making, resilience is a complex and ambiguous concept addressing multiple dimensions. Definitions and attributes of resilience vary widely between studies. Infrastructure is also a versatile concept and can describe built assets (hard infrastructure) or refers to all the institutions which are required to maintain the economic, health, and cultural and social standards of a country (soft infrastructure). In addition, infrastructure can be considered in terms of physical objects and networks or in terms of services. These different conceptions determine very different perimeters and sectors and ultimately result in divergent approaches to select relevant dimensions and design corresponding indicators. Analysis and modeling are confronted with considerable uncertainties regarding climate system behavior, but also future emissions, development trajectories and urbanization trends, in particular at the regional level. These uncertainties make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to know exactly what the infrastructure should be adapted to. The past is no longer a reliable guide for the future as both the natural and the social spheres are becoming increasingly dynamic and uncertain. Resilience is increasingly adopted in its broadest and most comprehensive definition which blends persistence and adaptability where Resilience is the ability of X to anticipate, absorb, adapt to and rapidly recover from Y. These different abilities correspond to different temporal phases: A system resists and absorbs during and recovers after a stressful event. All three abilities depend on adaptability efforts to anticipate, prevent and prepare the system which take place before an event. To be used in practice, resilience need to be framed: the nature and focus of methodologies developed to assess and measure resilience depends on the adopted definitions, the type of infrastructure of interest –in particular whether soft infrastructure is included or not, the perimeter, sectors and time horizon considered and last but not least, the purpose of the evaluation. The range of potential evaluation needs and the number of specific challenges precludes the elaboration of a one-size-fits-all set of indicators for infrastructure resilience. If there is no “perfect” operational framework which encompasses all the dimensions of infrastructure resilience, in practical terms, asset owners, local authorities, regulators and insurers face these issues on a daily basis. From an operational point of view, resilient infrastructures should be well designed and well managed. In other words, resilience of infrastructure is the result of: • good design to ensure that the system has the necessary resistance, reliability and redundancy and, • good organization to provide the ability, capacity and capability to respond and recover from disruptive events. Our efforts to identify “indicators” for infrastructure resilience have not revealed many existing indicators of value. Instead, it is clear that best practice guidelines are increasingly perceived as efficient tools to encourage and promote resilience and deliver a level of reassurance not otherwise available through specific indicators. Norms of engineering designs, materials, and retrofit strategies have been developed to enhance the ability of infrastructure elements to withstand natural hazards. Many design and engineering standards already contribute to ensuring resistance and reliability of infrastructure. Risk management and Business Continuity Management standards are generic and comprehensive approaches. They provide frameworks, guidelines and process-based indicators to continually update and improve the abilities of an organization to overcome a disruptive event. Efforts must be pursued to update infrastructure design standards to ensure that future infrastructure capital is more resilient to anticipated climate change and extreme events. Finally, several dynamic fields of investigation are likely to influence conception and methods of infrastructure resilience assessment in the near future, including: • Modeling of infrastructure dependency to account better for the complexity of the systems and ensure that vulnerabilities in one sector do not compromise others. • Ecosystem-based climate change adaptation which cost-efficiency is becoming increasingly recognized • Evaluation of the efficiency of indicators and cost-benefit assessments methods.

Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2020

Given the unforeseen events that take continue to place worldwide, cities are experiencing rapid transformations. To maintain their basic functions, cities have to be resilient-possess the ability to bounce back to their original state following extreme events. Unfortunately, the behavior of cities is complex because of the interdependence among their comprising infrastructure systems. The current work presents a critical review of research work pertaining to resilience of cities' critical infrastructure systems. To conduct such review, meta-research is employed through text analytics, in the form of topic modelling, to quantitatively uncover related latent topics in pertinent literature. Subsequently, the identified topics are qualitatively analyzed in terms of established definitions and metrics for resilience as well as adopted simulation approaches for infrastructure systems interdependence. Accordingly, nine common topics and five major research gaps are identified. This meta-research study is a steppingstone towards better understanding of infrastructure systems interdependence simulation and their resilience quantification approaches.

2019

From the 7th to the 8th of February 2019, more than 70 scientists from different disciplines and countries came together for the international Conference “Urban Infrastructure: Criticality, Vulnerability and Protection” which was organised by the Research Training Group KRITIS at Technische Universitat Darmstadt. The focus of the conference was on networked critical infrastructures (CI) in cities as socio-technical systems that require special protection strategies due to their vulnerabilities. Five multidisciplinary panels on Governance, Spatiality, Temporality, Safety and Security, and ICT Solutions elucidated urban CI protection. The keynote lectures by Per Hogselius (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Jon Coaffee (University of Warwick; New York University) and Christoph Lamers (State Fire Service Institute North Rhine Westfalia) highlighted and deepened the aspects relevant to this context. Despite all the diversity of the contributions from many different disciplin...