Coupling Coordination Research on Disaster-Adapted Resilience of Modern Infrastructure System in the Middle and Lower Section of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area

Abstract

Rapid incremental urbanization in China has resulted in an incomplete modern infrastructure system and multiple point-like flaws. This is due to a lack of funding and poor scientific construction concepts and procedures. This also contributes to the infrastructure system’s low disaster-adapted resilience and insufficient coupling coordination of production-oriented and service-oriented infrastructure subsystems. Based on the “Robustness-Rapidity-Redundancy-Resourcefulness-Durability” (4R-D) frameworks, this study screens 53 indicators across three tiers of “production-oriented, service-oriented, intelligent” infrastructure subsystems to establish a modern infrastructure resilience evaluation system. We examined the overall infrastructure resilience and coupling coordination development among subsystems in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) from 2009 to 2020 using a coupling coordination degree model (CCDM). Grey relational analysis (GRA) was used to analyze the significant control aspects of infrastructure resilience and coupling coordination degree based on grey system theory. The findings show the following: (1) at the macro level the overall resilience, resilience of each subsystem, and coupling coordination among subsystems in the research region show an upward trend from 2009 to 2020, with the rise from 2018 to 2020 being the most significant; (2) at the micro level, from 2010 to 2013, there was no obvious spatial divergence and from 2014 to 2020, driven by the radiation of the two major urban agglomerations, the resilience and coupling coordination of Yiling and Wanzhou both show a trend of more substantial increase, while the rest of the counties have a small increase; and (3) at the meso level, seven factors have a more significant impact on the coupled and coordinated development of urban infrastructure than other indicators, including urbanization rate, average annual rainfall, the number of health technicians per 10,000 people, and the percentage of GDP in the tertiary industrial sector.