SAI: Understanding and managing the societal impacts of infrastructure system service interruptions

This project aims to improve infrastructure system resilience through investigating how best to minimize the negative consequences of infrastructure system service interruptions. Interruptions to infrastructure system services, such as electric power, water supply, and telecommunications, can have serious consequences for the economy, public health, and national security. While substantial infrastructure systems resilience research has been conducted in recent years, there remains a need for improved understanding of (1) the relationship between system impact (service outages) and societal impact (interruption in daily activities), (2) the complex, dynamic interactions that occur during the restoration period between the functioning of the system, restoration actions taken by the system operators, and adaptations implemented by consumers, and (3) the way the risk and best strategies vary depending on the characteristics of the specific network, users, disruptive event, and larger context. This project investigates these issues, and provides corresponding tools for researchers and, as a translational benefit, for infrastructure service providers. The project offers a leap forward in infrastructure system resilience through four objectives: (1) Develop and validate an outage impact scale (OIS) that describes the impacts of outages on users of different types (residential, commercial, etc.); (2) Develop quantitative models to predict adaptation implementation and user impacts in terms of the new OIS; (3) Develop the computational model-based Interdependent Resilient Infrastructure Simulation tool (IRIS) to describe infrastructure service restoration, using the OIS and models from Obj. 1 and 2; and (4) Generate a large suite of analysis scenarios representing a wide range of synthetic systems, communities, and disruptive events; and use IRIS to analyze them to better understand system behavior under different circumstances and support the design and implementation of best risk management strategies. The research focuses on electric power and water supply but aims to be extensible to other infrastructure types in the future. This project advances understanding of the resilience of infrastructure as sociotechnical systems and the best strategies to manage them in different circumstances so as to minimize negative societal impacts. IRIS will be integrated into a simulation platform that provides next-generation computational modeling and simulation software tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.