BIM-GIS-DCEs enabled vulnerability assessment of interdependent infrastructures – A case of stormwater drainage-building-road transport Nexus in urban flooding

Abstract

Infrastructure systems are encountering unprecedented challenges as a result of climate change. Identifying infrastructure vulnerabilities before hazards strike is of paramount significance as it can help minimize the adverse consequences. However, investigating the vulnerability of single infrastructure system is myopic as it neglects the interdependencies between networked infrastructure systems. Owners and operators of different infrastructure systems should collaborate to identify infrastructure vulnerabilities against various hazard types from a system-of-systems standpoint. Nonetheless, systematic high-resolution vulnerability assessment of interdependent infrastructure systems requires versatile data and computational resources. While it is cost intensive and resourceful to develop a gigantic software for assessing infrastructure vulnerability, it is possible to synchronize available toolkits like building information modeling (BIM), geographic information system (GIS) and domain-specific computational engines (DCEs) to perform interdisciplinary infrastructure vulnerability assessment. This paper proposes an integrated BIM-GIS-DCEs approach to facilitate system-of-systems-based infrastructure vulnerability assessment. The proposed approach consists of the following key components: (i) Building information elicitation from BIM model, (ii) Physics-based pre- and post-hazard infrastructure performance simulation using DCEs, and (iii) Data integration and geospatial analysis for decision making on GIS platform. In the proposed approach, BIM provides hazard-sensitive properties of building elements, and DCEs serve to simulate the infrastructure performance before and after hazard occurs based on the predetermined physics-based operating regimes. Essentially, GIS stores the data from heterogeneous sources and mediates the semantic mapping between the simulation tools of distinct infrastructure domains. The embedded geospatial analysis functions in GIS facilitate the investigation of hazard-vulnerable components within an infrastructure system and also the expected hazard impacts at the community scale. The validity of the integrated approach is demonstrated using the stormwater drainage-building-road transport nexus during urban flooding. The integration of BIM, GIS and DCEs constitutes a new modeling paradigm which is expected to provide an effective avenue to formalize the collaborative effort between different infrastructure stakeholders not to mention about its ability to intelligently generate reliable and high-resolution vulnerability assessment results.