Framework for Designing Virtual Water and Power Supply Networks with Interdependent Characteristics for Resilience Assessment

Abstract

Urban water and power supply networks with interdependent characteristics are essential components of urban infrastructures and play an important role in maintaining the daily operations and post-disaster recovery of cities. The aim of this study is to provide a method for researchers of resilient cities to build virtual water and power supply networks according to their basic physical mechanisms so that they can complete the risk or resilience evaluation of benchmark cities when some confidential infrastructure information is difficult to obtain. The innovation is that a new design framework for urban virtual water and power networks with interdependent characteristics combined with geographic information is suggested based on the perspective of practical engineering. After giving an overview of the framework, this paper presents the planning and design of the water and power supply networks as well as the interdependence between them in detail. Then the water and power supply networks of a virtual city called Virtual Shangcheng City are established, which verify the feasibility and practicality of the approach. This framework can establish virtual water and power supply networks with interdependent characteristics that conform to actual engineering and urban geographic information characteristics. Moreover, it can provide an effective modeling method for water and power supply networks in the absence of data for urban resilience and disaster risk studies.