Local interactions and homophily effects in actor collaboration networks for urban resilience governance

Qingchun Li,Ali Mostafavi

doi:10.1007/s41109-021-00433-z

Abstract

Understanding actor collaboration networks and their evolution is essential to promoting collective action in resilience planning and management of interdependent infrastructure systems. Local interactions and choice homophily are two important network evolution mechanisms. Network motifs encode the information of network formation, configuration, and the local structure. Homophily effects, on the other hand, capture whether the network configurations have significant correlations with node properties. The objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which local interactions and homophily effects influence actor collaboration in resilience planning and management of interdependent infrastructure systems. We mapped bipartite actor collaboration network based on a post-Hurricane Harvey stakeholder survey that revealed actor collaborations for hazard mitigation. We examined seven bipartite network motifs for the mapped collaboration network and compared the mapped network to simulated random models with same degree distributions. Then we examined whether the network configurations had significant statistics for node properties using exponential random graph models. The results provide insights about the two mechanisms—local interactions and homophily effect—influencing the formation of actor collaboration in resilience planning and management of interdependent urban systems. The findings have implications for improving network cohesion and actor collaborations from diverse urban sectors.

Highlights

Collaboration among diverse actors is critical for effective resilience planning and management of interdependent infrastructure systems (IISs) (Li et al 2019, 2021)
To map the actor collaboration network, we identified 95 influential actors involved in resilience planning from different urban sectors, including community development (CD), flood control (FC), transportation (TT), environmental conservation (EC), and emergency response (ER)
The network motif analysis shows that the actor collaboration network has strong local interactions

Summary

Introduction

Collaboration among diverse actors is critical for effective resilience planning and management of interdependent infrastructure systems (IISs) (Li et al 2019, 2021). In the context of this study, resilience is defined as “the capacity of human and infrastructure systems to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events (National Research Council 2012).”. This definition highlights the importance of human systems affecting urban resilience that involve actors from diverse urban sectors (e.g., transportation, emergency response, environmental conservation, and flood control) with diverse priorities, resources, and responsibilities. Inconsistencies among land use approaches and hazard mitigation plans would allow urban growth in hazard-prone areas (Godschalk 2003)

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