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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IDEal reSCUE (Integrated DEsign and control of Sustainable CommUnities during Emergencies)

Teaser

Summary

The outcome of the project IDEAL RESCUE will be a novel method to assess the performance of critical infrastructures and their interdependencies as well as the influence of human behavior. Literature review has pointed out that a gap exists in literature and a large comprehensive model considering all infrastructures and their interaction is missing. The ground breaking potential of the research is the insertion of â€œEmotionsâ€ in the human decision making process which affects performance of critical infrastructures especially during emergency, as proven by recent disasters.
The project will open a new field of research in hybrid modelling by combining the potentialities of network and agent-based models. The research conducted in the project will lead to an advanced understanding of risk assessment and considerably better management of existing buildings and civil infrastructures. This will have significant impact on the society by improving the resiliency of the civil infrastructure systems and ensuring continuity of CI service after extreme events. If the project is successful, the framework developed will assist asset managers in public and private organizations in developing and choosing the best policies and strategies during emergencies by performing real-time simulations which combine both preliminary real data with simulated ones. It will also be used for scenario analysis where the decision maker specifies the budget and assess its impact on resilience, as infrastructures continue to age during their life-cycle.

Work performed

The main results achieved so far in the first period are:
â€¢ RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK: In recent years, the concept of resilience has been introduced to the engineering field in particular related to disaster mitigation and management. Maintaining community functionality during and after a disaster, defined as resilience, is influenced by multiple components. In the first reporting period a framework has been proposed for measuring community resilience at different spatial and temporal scales. Seven dimensions are identified for measuring community resilience: population and demographics, environmental and ecosystem, organized governmental services, physical infrastructures, lifestyle and community competence, economic development, and social-cultural capital. They are summarized with the acronym PEOPLES. Each dimension is characterized by a corresponding performance metric that is combined with the other dimensions using a multi-layered approach. Therefore, once a hybrid model of the community is defined, the proposed framework can be applied to measure its performance against any type of extreme event during emergency and in long term post disaster phases. The proposed framework can be used as decision support by stakeholders and managers and it can help planners in selecting the optimal restoration strategies that enhance the community resilience index.
â€¢ HOSPITAL NETWORK: The development of an hospital model to analyze its performance during a seismic event;The model has been calibrated using factorial analysis on a sample of hospitals located in San Francisco, California. Finally the proposed metamodel has been applied to an hospital network to assess the resilience of the health care network during an emergency like the â€œBig oneâ€ in California.
â€¢ MULTIHAZARD ANALYSIS OF HOSPITAL: A new methodology to assess the total damage of structural elements caused by cascading hazards has been developed and applied to a hospital building located in California subjected to three cascading hazards (earthquake, blast, and fire). Nonlinear time-history analyses are performed using seven ground motions scaled to five earthquake levels and the seismic response of the structure is evaluated.
â€¢ WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK: A new resilience index for water distribution network has been implemented. The indicator is the product of three indices: (1) the number of users temporarily without water, (2) the water level in the tank, and (3) the water quality. The resilience index is expected to help planners and engineers evaluate the functionality of a WDN, which includes: (1) delivering a certain demand of water with an acceptable level of pressure and quality, and (2) the restoration process following an extreme event. The method has been applied to a small town located in the South of italy.
â€¢ HUMAN BEHAVIOR: A new methodology has been proposed that includes in agent-based models the human behavior, considering the anxiety effects generated by the crowd and their influence on the evacuation delays. The proposed model is able to take into account the interdependency between the earthquake evacuation process, and the corresponding damage of structural and non-structural components that is expressed in term of fragility curves. The software REPAST HPC has been used to implement the model, and as a case study, the earthquake evacuation by a mall located in Oakland has been used. The human behavior model has been calibrated through a survey using a miscellaneous sample from different countries.
The PI and his research team joined several international congresses to disseminate the results of the research. Furthermore, the PI organized an International Workshop on Resilience (Torino, September 2016) as part of the communication activity.
The PI attended several working groups in Rome, especially with ENEL Foundation in order to establish some collaboration on the project main subjects mutually beneficial from both sides.

Final results

What makes this project unique with respect to all the other works available in literature is the modelling of human behaviour within the context of infrastructure interdependencies, using a layered approach based on the application of the extended version of the Input-Output Inoperability Matrix (IIM). In fact, critical infrastructures and human behaviour are strongly correlated when the functionality of a community is limited due to emergencies.
Interdependencies between critical infrastructures create new challenges that need to be addressed at several decision-making levels involving multiple stakeholders, and modelled from various perspectives; therefore it has been impossible for a single model to address all concerns of infrastructure interdependencies so far. The novel concept consists in developing a new approach to model the performance of infrastructures and their interdependencies. A framework of integrated models of hybrid type will be developed by coupling agent-based models, Network models and an infrastructure management approach (CLIOS).
The research conducted in the project will lead to an advanced understanding of risk assessment and considerably better management of existing buildings and civil infrastructures. This will have significant impact on the society by improving the resiliency of the civil infrastructure systems and ensuring continuity of CI service after extreme events. If the project is successful, the framework developed will assist asset managers in public and private organizations in developing and choosing the best policies and strategies during emergencies by performing real-time simulations which combine both preliminary real data with simulated ones. It will also be used for scenario analysis where the decision maker specifies the budget and assess its impact on resilience, as infrastructures continue to age during their life-cycle.