Social vulnerability and equity perspectives on interdependent infrastructure network component importance

Abstract

Critical infrastructure networks are often described as (i) interdependent in nature for operability, (ii) vulnerable against multiple natural or human-made hazards, and (iii) vital for providing the essential needs and ensuring the functionality of societies. Developing a plan for infrastructure network resilience is enabled by the identification of the most critical components that have the largest impact on the performance interdependent networks, as well as on society in terms of serving its needs. In this work, we propose a component importance measure that is driven by the social aspects of resilience, which quantifies the impact of equitable restoration activities on components of interdependent infrastructure networks. To integrate the social expectations from various perspectives in the restoration scheduling of interdependent infrastructure networks, we combine this component importance measure with multiple social vulnerability measures that define different socio-economic characteristics in a society. Finally, we implement a multi-criteria decision analysis technique to determine the final importance ranking of the components and illustrate our approach with two critical infrastructure networks in Shelby County, TN. To our knowledge, our proposed methodology is the first to incorporate both social equity and social vulnerability concepts with the component importance measures of critical interdependent infrastructure network restoration scheduling.