Evaluating the Impact of Infrastructure Interdependencies on the Emergency Services Sector and Critical Support Functions Using an Expert Opinion Survey

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The vulnerability of critical infrastructure systems and their interdependencies have long-standing implications for community recovery and resilience. Extant research on critical infrastructure interdependencies has focused primarily on the infrastructure systems themselves and has paid less attention to the impact of infrastructure breakdowns on critical services in disasters. This study aims at analyzing the impact of infrastructure interdependencies on the emergency services sector (ESS) and critical support functions using an expert opinion survey of emergency managers, city planners, utility providers, and other stakeholders from two study regions: South Florida and parts of New York (NY), New Jersey (NJ), and Eastern Pennsylvania (PA). The majority of the survey respondents identified the loss of power as the most important factor affecting service delivery in their respective sector. Over 70% reported that loss of communications considerably impacted computer-aided dispatch (CAD) capabilities for the coordination of emergency services, dispatch of ambulances, and other medically equipped vehicles, as well as responders’ ability to continue their work. A comparison of individual service categories by type of infrastructure disruption and region revealed that there was a similar level of agreement among the respondents regarding the importance of backup power. There is a statistically significant difference in stakeholder responses regarding lack of adequate fuel supply with the stakeholders in the NY-NJ-PA study region more concerned about fuel availability than their counterparts in South Florida. The use of log-linear models to analyze key interdependencies between the ESS and critical infrastructures reveals conditional dependencies with statistically significant associations between critical infrastructure services and coordination of emergency response, access to health services, sheltering, and postdisaster evacuation. The findings from this research have important policy implications for prioritizing infrastructure restoration and improving disaster recovery outcomes.