Techniques of Improving Infrastructure and Energy Resilience in Urban Setting

Abstract

The work proposes a technique to improve the infrastructure and energy resilience of new developments during the planning stage. Several resilience-related parameters are developed in this paper that can be used to quantify resilience. To apply these parameters, the work assumes various energy outage scenarios varying from less than 24 h to 3 weeks. During these scenarios, a neighborhood population can be relocated to several public buildings promoting better utilization of onsite energy resources. The technique is applied to four representative neighborhoods encompassing various sustainability measures including clean energy. Further, this paper demonstrates an urban scale improvement technique for greater energy and infrastructure resilience. The results indicate a significant improvement in infrastructure resilience by relocating public shelter buildings on the main street intersections so that these can be easily accessible during energy outages or disaster events. Energy resilience can be achieved by the appropriate design of onsite energy resources to eliminate vulnerabilities. For instance, 8.8% to 15.4% of additional land for solar thermal collectors can eliminate thermal energy vulnerabilities. When surplus generation from onsite resources is twice or more as compared to demand during their unavailability, the electrical vulnerability can be eliminated by employing suitable battery banks in various buildings.