Author(s)

KYLE B. PFEIFFER, CARMELLA BURDI & SCOTT SCHLUETER

Abstract

Situational awareness of the operational status of specific, critical supply and demand nodes following a major disaster may inform response and recovery activities based on the ability of an infrastructure asset or system to support core facility operations. Near-real-time analysis of infrastructure dependency information is a computationally intensive process that has generally been observed informally by public safety officials. While system-level information may be desired, it has been beyond the capabilities of most local public safety and emergency management agencies. To address this problem, a Grass-roots Infrastructure Dependency Model (GRID-M) was developed to enable near-real-time analysis of physical infrastructure dependencies of specific supply and demand nodes within four lifeline sectors: electricity, natural gas, water, and wastewater. The operational status of each node can be characterized as operational, partially operational, or not operational. These statuses are obtained by matching real-time outage or disruption data from utility providers with predetermined specific coping strategies based on a preincident limited infrastructure survey for specific assets within a network. This information can also be paired with a limited damage assessment to provide awareness of the accessibility to, and physical state of, each node within supply chains of interest. GRID-M displays all outputs within a Geographic Information Systems environment with additional prepopulated layers such as real-time traffic and demographic information of the affected communities. As such, GRID-M may be used following a major disaster to support the identification of priority response and recovery objectives based on the disruptions of critical local supply chains and their relationship with affected communities.

Keywords

critical infrastructure, dependency, disaster, emergency management, preparedness, resilience, supply chain