Interdependent Response of Complex Urban Infrastructures Subjected to Multiple Hazards

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The accelerated growth of modern cities is creating unique challenges to the interdependent urban infrastructures that support contemporary technical, social, and economic vitality. Infrastructures such as power grids, water distribution networks, and telecommunication systems are growing in size and complexity at a pace that prevents understanding the effects of this rapid evolution on their functionality and resilience. If natural hazards or human-induced disruptions strike, urban infrastructures become the object of the perturbation and the means for prompt recovery. This dual role demands understanding of the mechanisms that enable failure propagation within and across urban systems, and the strategies that can be adopted to improve their residual functionality and recovery time in the event of unforeseen disruptions. Hence, this project aims at developing high fidelity models for interdependent urban infrastructures that can capture cascading failures and interdependencies. The adopted approach will simultaneously model network topology, internal flow patterns, and the pathways that support interaction across different systems. These models will be able to quantify global interdependent effects, and help prioritizing intervention actions to improve redundancy and accelerate urban recovery if disruptions occur. Interdependent optimization, which requires coordination of multiple objectives and constraints, will yield the most desirable socio-technical strategies. This project also supports the concept of system-level thinking for the new generation of civil engineers. A new course on ?Complex Urban Systems? at Rice University, and guided-visits to utilities of the city of Houston, Texas, will provide students the opportunity to engage in modern problem-based learning strategies. This project will also create an enriched summer experience for undergraduate students interested in urban infrastructures and working on network data mining and interdependent failure analysis problems. Since urban systems reach multiple demographics, a culturally and ethnic diverse pool of interns is expected to bring in unique perspectives and insights for their analysis. This project will also leverage the successes of the NSF-funded Mid-America Earthquake Center by providing new tools for the network analysis modules of MAEviz, the Center?s seismic impact assessment software package used today by urban risk analysts, city planners, and emergency managers. Also, interdependent infrastructure analysis frameworks will find applications in cybersecurity assessment of technologically advanced interdependent lifeline systems.