Internet of people enabled framework for evaluating performance loss and resilience of urban critical infrastructures

Abstract

Critical infrastructures (CIs) such as road networks play a critical role in transporting affected people to hospitals and shelters during disasters. Timely evaluation of road networks’ performance loss and resilience enables emergency management agencies (EMAs) to make quick and optimized decisions on resource allocation to critical road segments and bridges. However, real-time monitoring of road network conditions has been recognized as a challenge during major natural disasters because the affected regions are often inaccessible. This research introduces the Internet of People (IoP) enabled framework to assess road network’s performance loss during disasters and proposes a performance loss rate to evaluate the road network resilience. The framework is illustrated by a case study of Hurricane Florence in Wilmington, North Caroline, USA. Through semantic analysis of road-related social media data, this study identifies the affected roads during the hurricane. To further evaluate the road network resilience, this research utilizes road network analysis to generate a service zone for each main hospital before and after the hurricane. The population-weighted travel time in each service zone are compared before and after the hurricane to indicate the degree of performance loss. The findings show that our IoP enabled framework can effectively support CI protection for building smart and resilient city environments.