Resilience Improvement Research Articles

Transportation resilience optimization from an economic perspective at the pre-event stage

Since disruptive events can cause negative impacts on a city's regular traffic order and economic activities, it is crucial that a transport network is resilient against disaster to prevent significant economic losses and ensure regular social, economic, and traffic order. However, using the transport metric for resilience improvement can only provide a limited view of transport pre-investments. This study develops an optimization framework to tackle the problem of resilient road pre-investment with the aim of resilience enhancement of traffic systems from an economic perspective by applying the integrated computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. First, we use the Shapley value, which considers road links’ interact cooperation, to determine critical candidate links that need to be upgraded. Second, we propose the Economic-based Network Resilience Measure (ENRM) as a performance indicator to evaluate network-level resilience from the economic perspective. Third, a bi-level multi-objective optimization model is formulated to identify the optimal capacity improvement for candidate critical links, where the objectives of the upper-level model are to minimize the ENRM and pre-enhancement budget. The lower-level model is built on the integrated CGE model. The genetic algorithm approach is used to solve the proposed bi-level model. A case study of the optimization framework is presented using a simplified Sydney network. Results suggest that a higher budget can help promote people's social welfare and improve transportation resilience. However, the Pareto-optimality is observed, and the marginal utility decreases with an increase in the investment budget. Further, the results also show that investment returns are higher in severe disasters. This study will help transport planners and practitioners optimize resilience pre-event investment strategies by capturing a wider range of project impacts and evaluating their economic impacts under general equilibrium rather than partial economic equilibrium, which is often assumed in traditional four-step transport planning.

A Decision Support Model for Improvement of Urban Resilience through Accessibility Analysis

Decision support systems provide vital benefits supplying additional information before planning in disaster management. To improve a city's resilience against disasters such organization and maintenance must be conducted during the city planning stage. In this work, an improvement suggestion mechanism is built using risk value estimation through availability of emergency centers and road network redundancy is provided. This approach investigates the study area to determine possible risk zones within the city using routing and road network analysis. Upon investigation of the necessary parameters, a risk value is calculated for each administrative division within a city. These risk values are then passed to the decision support stage in which the system can pick one or several items from a list of improvements to reduce overall riskiness of these divisions. This work combines several ideas of emergency management domain in a formula to provide a quantitative meaning to possible risk within administrative divisions. Decision support aspect can be customized further to help planners have a preliminary analysis by showing the optimal locations to place new emergency management facilities.

Data Envelopment Analysis for Efficiency Measurement of Bridge Resilience

The resilience of a bridge is computed using different quantitative and qualitative assessment methodologies. However, the resilience score obtained by these assessment approaches is insufficient for the decision-makers for setting a priority level for bridges in need of resilience improvement. To address this issue, the present study develops a methodology using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. A total of 12 bridges are selected as the decision-making units in the DEA model. This study considers the variables such as age, area, design high flood level, and finish road level of the bridge as inputs, and bridge resilience index as the output variable. Based on these variables, three frameworks are developed to compute the efficiency of bridge resilience. A variable return to scale with the output-oriented formulation of DEA is selected to compute the efficiency of bridge resilience in all three frameworks. Thus, the proposed methodology enables bridge owners to set a priority level for bridges in need of resilience improvement based on the scores of the assessment methodology.

Seismic resilience assessment and improvement framework for electrical substations

AbstractExperience from previous earthquakes shows that electrical substations are the most vulnerable components within the power transmission system. Thus, their disaster resilience is essential for providing electric power to communities in earthquake‐prone regions. In this study, a quantitative framework was proposed to assess the seismic resilience of electrical substations. The functionality of a substation was quantified using its maximum allowable transmission capacity that integrates the substation topology, redundancy level, line capacity, and power balance. The network model of the substation was developed to investigate how component damage affects substation's functionality. Substation's recovery was simulated as a time‐stepping process, in which at each time step the substation's ability to provide transmission capacity was conditioned on the functionality state of its components, whose recovery depends on the availability of repair crews and spare parts. The uncertainty of the resilience assessment was quantified by considering the uncertainty in the component‐level vulnerability and recoverability. The impacts of components’ robustness, repair resource constraints, and post‐earthquake recovery scheduling on substation resilience were investigated by modifying components’ seismic fragility curves, available recovery resources, and repair priorities. A case study was conducted on a real‐world 220/110 kV step‐down substation, and a parametric analysis was carried out to investigate the effect of various seismic resilience improvement strategies to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework in seismic disaster risk reduction and management.

A novel grid cell–based urban flood resilience metric considering water velocity and duration of system performance being impacted

Flood risks are increasing due to climate change and urbanization. To alleviate flooding problems, the development of flood resilience is necessary. However, existing metrics based on the system performance curve and grid cells only consider the impacts of the water depth. The system performance thresholds are typically determined based on expert experience and study area conditions, resulting in the subjectivity of resilience metrics. This study proposes a novel flood resilience metric that considers the water velocity and duration of system performance being impacted. The Flood Hazard rating index and incipient velocity were used to objectively determine system performance thresholds. The system performance of traffic land was determined by considering the instability mechanisms of residents and vehicles during floods. The proposed metric was evaluated in the Minzhi region of Shenzhen City, China, under different rainfall intensities. Comparisons with an existing metric were conducted, and the contributions of flood resilience area loss of different land-use types under different rainfall intensities were analyzed. The results suggest that an increase in rainfall intensity reduces flood resilience; the higher the rainfall intensity, the longer the flood impact duration is in the study area and in different land-use types. Floods and rainfall intensity have larger influences on traffic land than on other land-use types. The proposed metric provides better performance for quantifying the impacts of floods than the existing metric. Under the rainfall intensity variation, the land-use type with the greatest impact on the overall flood resilience changes from residential land to traffic land. A decrease in the flood resilience of greenspace contributes the least to a decrease in the overall flood resilience. Traffic land should be the priority land-use type in flood resilience improvement projects. The results of the in-depth analysis of urban flood resilience assessment in this study provide reference for flood mitigation and risk reduction.

Influences of COVID-19 Work-Related Fears and Anhedonia on Resilience of Workers in the Health Sector during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers worked under stressful conditions, challenging their individual resilience. Therefore, we explored the bidirectional influence of resilience and the factors of COVID-19 work-related fears and anhedonia in Austrian healthcare workers. Methods: Healthcare workers in Austria completed an online survey at two points in time. The first measurement started in winter 2020/2021 (t1), and a second measurement began approximately 1.5 years later (t2). One hundred and eight six individuals completed both surveys and were investigated in a longitudinal design. We applied the Resilience Scale, the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale, and a self-created questionnaire assessing COVID-19 work-related fears. We used a repeated measures analysis of variance and applied Pearson-Correlations as well as univariate and multivariate analyses of covariance. Results: Resilience was significantly correlated with COVID-19 work-related fears and anhedonia at both points in time in all participants. We found no significant differences for frontline vs. non-frontline workers at t1 and t2. Resilience decreased significantly over time. Limitations: Most subjects were examined cross-sectionally. Frontline workers were underrepresented in our sample. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of resilience in healthcare providers. Steps must be taken to maintain and promote resilience in healthcare workers. We suggest that the improvement of resilience, dealing with fears and uncertainty, and the ability to experience joy might have a beneficial influence on the respective other categories as well.

Resilience enhancement of Islanded Microgrid by diversification, reconfiguration, and DER placement/sizing

Motivated by recent wide-scale deployment of Microgrids (MGs), this paper proposes an innovative framework for resilience enhancement of Islanded Microgrids (IMGs) against potential cyberattacks targeting IMG’s critical load curtailment. The proposed framework provides solutions for resilience enhancement in pre-attack (normal situation) and post-detection stages benefiting from three techniques, i.e., (i) ODPS: Optimal Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Placement and Sizing, (ii) OID: Optimal Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED) Diversification, and (iii) OPNR: Optimal Power Network Reconfiguration. The proposed approach improves all the phases of the resilience curve for an IMG, i.e., survive, sustain, and recovery. To improve the survive and sustain resilience phases, ODPS and OID techniques are used to optimally design the power and cyber configurations in pre-attack stage. In the operation phase, an OPNR technique is employed in both pre-attack and post-detection stages to effectively enhance the system resilience in survive and recovery phases. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated using IEEE 17- and 69-bus test systems operating as IMGs. The obtained results demonstrate significant improvements in the overall resilience of the underlying IMG.

Quantifying improvement of building and zone level thermal resilience by cooling retrofits against summertime heat events

Quantifying building resilience to extreme weather conditions helps identify the capability of a building system to tolerate disturbances and recover from extreme events. The robustness of building retrofit strategies can also be evaluated through their contributions to building resilience. In this study, building thermal resilience to summertime heatwaves is defined based on the concept of resilience trapezoid. The Thermal Resilience Index (TRI) with several labeling classes (Class F to Class A+) is proposed to quantify the resilience levels with respect to the relative improvement from original indoor thermal conditions. In addition to evaluating the overall resilience of a building, the resilience of each thermal zone in the building can be quantified with the proposed TRI criteria. A quantification framework is proposed by using the Standard Effective Temperature (SET) index as the performance indicator, and the entire procedure is demonstrated with a long-term care building of five stories. Four retrofit measures and their combinations are implemented to improve the building resilience to heatwaves. The results show layered multiple strategies are necessary to improve both the overall resilience of the building and the resilience of its component thermal zones. The resilience of the building can achieve the level of Class B after the combined strategies are applied, providing an improvement of 50%–70% in the degree of resilience. The proposed TRI index and spatial distribution analysis are useful in evaluating the overall and zonal resilience of a building.

Review of distribution network’s resilience based on typhoon disaster

In recent years, extreme meteorological disasters occur frequently all over the world, causing huge impacts and losses to distribution networks. For these low-probability and high-loss events, it is necessary to establish a kind of distribution network—resilient distribution network, which can prevent extreme disasters and quickly recover critical loads. This paper mainly studies the influence of typhoon disaster on distribution network, and summarizes the research results of existing resilient distribution network in typhoon model, pre-disaster warning, disaster resistance and absorption, post-disaster recovery, resilience evaluation and resilience improvement.

Formaldehyde-free sugarcane-derived aldehydes to co-crosslink silk fabrics with diols for improving wet resilience and minimizing pollutions from wet processing of silk

We developed formaldehyde-free sugarcane-derived aldehydes for silk to minimize pollutions from wet processing of silk fibers via substantial improvement in wet resilience of silk fabrics. Developing effective and non-toxic crosslinkers from plant products promotes sustainability of silk textiles. The poor wet resiliency only allows silk materials for dry cleaning, which has considerable environmental and health concerns. Most silk treatments, based on non-biobased chemicals, resulted in lowered mechanical properties and unacceptable color changes to the materials. Here we applied a softener-free and plant-based co-crosslinking system using sugarcane-derived-aldehydes and diols, which ensured high degrees of crosslinkages durable to repeated home launderings for pollution alleviation. Diols increased degrees of crosslinkings and converted hemiacetal to acetal crosslinkages, indicated by 1H NMR, via reaction with aldehydes groups, thus substantially improving shape retention of silk, e.g., improvement of wet wrinkle recovery degree from 180˚ to 248˚, and smoothness after repeated launderings from Steps 1.9–3.3. The lowered crosslinking temperature provided by sugarcane-derived-aldehydes minimized the damage to silk protein fibers and enhanced the retention of dry tear strength, wet tear strength, dry breaking strength, wet breaking strength, and whiteness to 80 %, 95 %, 86 %, 120 %, and 91 %, respectively. The co-crosslinking in this work, 30–60 °C lower than common non-biobased crosslinking methods with dimethyloldihydroxyethyleneurea and butanetetracarboxylic acid, provides similar wet resilience but higher retention of mechanical properties, whiteness, and higher wet strength. The co-crosslinking system in this work provided silk fibers with high quality and free of concerns from health and the environment.

A Maturity Model to Assess and Foster the Resilience of Organizations

Adverse events like energy supply shortages seem to be ubiquitous nowadays. They can negatively affect organizations to varying degrees. In case organizations are negatively affected by adverse events, they need to deal with such circumstances. The concept of resilience is a promising approach supporting organizations if adverse circumstances occur. Against this background, a novel maturity model to analyze and assess resilience capabilities of organizations or units thereof is proposed that aim to deal with adverse circumstances. The maturity model consists of three dimensions, twelve attributes and six stages that together form its structural design. For validation purposes a workshop with professionals working for different departments of a private-sector company has been conducted. The workshop generally reveals the suitability of the maturity model to assess the resilience of organizational units. Workshop participants especially value the maturity model with regard to transparency, comprehensiveness, comparability and the ability to provide indications for resilience improvements.

Financial allocation and network recovery for interdependent wastewater treatment infrastructure: development of resilience metrics

ABSTRACT The disrupted performance of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) when facing floods can cause complications in urban systems’ functioning. Therefore, utilities need to improve the resilience of their facilities and establish asset restoration plans. The present study aims at investigating two metrics to improve the WWTP’s resilience. An attribute-based resilience metric is devised using a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) framework to attain a budget allocation proposition. A network model representing the interdependent infrastructure is also formulated to develop a performance-based metric. The network’s post-disaster behavior is simulated to obtain an asset restoration sequence (RS). The results indicate that considering imprecisions in experts’ views lowers the possibility of underestimation or overestimation of resilience improvement when allocating funds. Furthermore, prioritizing facilities’ restoration will increase WWTPs’ resilience. The proposed methodology, which is tested on Brooklyn, provides a resilient solution to some challenges in asset management and can be applicable to other coastal settings.

Smart grid resiliency improvement using a multi-objective optimization approach

The enhancement in temperature will increase energy consumption and reduce the power grid’s efficiency. Due to global warming, improving grid resilience under extreme heat is very important. However, there is no metric to measure grid resilience based on temperature. In this research, a novel probabilistic metric for measuring network resilience is introduced in which the probability of temperature occurrence is calculated according to historical temperature data. This metric also depends on the energy remaining in the battery, which is calculated using a neural network. In addition, one of the main steps for power grid expansion is power demand forecasting. Classical models can not accurately estimate the future power demand; therefore, a novel model is introduced based on a twin support vector machine and quantile regression to forecast power demand. A multi-objective optimization problem is presented to minimize investment and operational costs and improve power grid resilience. The performance of the proposed method is investigated using numerical simulations. Results indicate both reliability and resilience are enhanced by optimal sizing and siting of PV panels and batteries. In addition, it is observed that global warming can reduce the resilience of the power grid and increase total investment and operational costs.

A belief rule-base approach to the assessment and improvement of seismic resilience of high-speed railway station buildings

As an important part of the railway system and the key node in the railway transportation network, the railway station undertakes the critical task of realizing convenient passenger transfer and efficient mass transportation. Resilience assessment and improvement of complex communal buildings have recently received significant attention, however, the complexity of including components, spatial structure, and engineering facilities made it challenging to find an accepted framework to assess the resilience of high-speed railway (HSR) stations. To overcome this challenge, the included subsystems for various operations of HSR stations are sorted out in detail, and the hierarchical belief rule-base (BRB) is adopted to establish the quantitative relationship between station function and each subsystem at different states after an earthquake through statistical analysis, expert knowledge, and logic analysis. Subsequently, optimization of the initial parameters in BRB is performed as a demonstration in case users need a more accurate BRB based on their experience and statistics. Finally, three subsystems repair sequential solving methods to improve the seismic resilience of HSR stations are proposed and discussed: the traversal algorithm, sensitivity-based method, and simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. The method proposed in this study paves the way for research on the resilience assessment of HSR station buildings.

Re-Adaptation of COVID-19 Impact for Sustainable Improvement of Indonesian Villages' Social Resilience in the Digital Era

The policy article aims to formulate a re-adaptation to the impact of COVID-19 that strengthens the social resilience of villages in a sustainable manner based on empirical findings. This article uses a sequential mixed model research design approach analysis with focus group discussion, and it is strengthened by data collected from 105 respondents chosen through random sampling techniques, online in-depth interviews, and group interviews in the villages where the article was conducted. The result showed that the village government was able to build a dialogue with villagers to find common understanding and build collective action to overcome the impact of COVID-19. Another finding is that the village government can realize real action in synergizing social protection policies from the government with the development of social security in rural communities. It was concluded that the experience of overcoming the impact of COVID-19 should be used as an innovation in the development mechanism of village governments in Indonesia. The innovation described in this article is known as re-adaptation. Disaster adaptation is designed and included in the village government's development planning mechanism document. The article has limitations because it does not examine existing regulations that could be used to expand innovative practices.

Medical-legal partnerships can mitigate climate health impacts on the underserved.

To the Editor: Climate change has been referred to as a “wicked problem par excellence” because it constitutes a “series of linked problems that cannot be solved (or even diagnosed) in isolation.”1 Furthermore, climate impacts those least able to adapt, disproportionately affecting “the most vulnerable, including among children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities, and those with underlying health problems.”2 Clinicians must be willing to work with allies outside of the medical arena to address climate change with a health equity lens. We, a family physician, and a legal aid lawyer in Florida, believe that Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) represent an underappreciated model for successful cross-disciplinary collaboration that can mitigate climate impacts on underserved populations. We call for more clinicians concerned about climate change to consider working with MLPs, and for more interdisciplinary research3 into MLPs and their ability to deliver meaningful improvements in climate resiliency. Climate effects on health can be exacerbated by inequality, such as increased precipitation contributing to incidence of mould in substandard housing that worsens a child’s asthma.4 Landlords may ignore the requests from low-income tenants to fix leaky pipes that cause the mould, rendering the child sicker and missing school more frequently. Many patients including immigrant populations5 may be unaware of their legal rights to have housing and sanitary codes be enforced and can benefit from a lawyer to advocate on their behalf. Other examples of climate vulnerabilities include unsafe working conditions or substandard educational environments.

Pediatric Augmented Reality (P-Ar) Implementation In Pandalungan Society: Prevention Of Upper Airways Infection On Children

Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are still a major health problem in Indonesia and even in the world. It causes of mortality and morbidity of many people in developing countries. AR has the potential to provide contextual education in media and can help explore interconnections in information in cyberspace, people, especially children and parents can use AR to build new understandings based on their interactions with virtual objects. The research method used in this research is pre-experimental design. The type of research design that is expected to prove the effect of P-AR on ARI with the design of educational media. The method involves a group of mothers who have children with ARI taken by consecutive sampling in the community when the posyandu is run. The total participants in this study were 107 participants, with an age range of 21 - 40 years. there was a decrease in maternal stress levels as much as stress (SD± 19.25 - 9.644) and improvement in maternal resilience after the application of PAR with (SD± 5.35 - 8.38). Based on the results of research, shown that mothers who have children with respiratory infections to receive health care in hospitals can make mothers experience depression and anxiety. In addition, children also feel anxious about the presence of disease. So we need a coping strategy and information that can help in problem solving. AR can be used to improve emotional health in children.

Exploring the Impact of a Family-Focused, Gender-Transformative Intervention on Adolescent Girls' Well-Being in a Humanitarian Context.

While family functioning interventions show promise for improving adolescent girls' well-being in humanitarian contexts, few programs employ a gender-transformative approach to maximize benefits for adolescent girls. This paper presents findings from a mixed-methods pilot evaluation of a whole-family, gender-transformative intervention conducted with Syrian refugee families in Jordan. The Siblings Support of Adolescent Girls in Emergencies program was implemented with 60 Syrian refugee households in Azraq and Za'atari camps in Jordan. A quantitative survey was administered to 18 households at baseline and endline, and researchers conducted qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with caregivers, paired interviews and participatory discussions with adolescents, and key informant interviews with program mentors. Paired t-tests revealed statistically significant improvements in mental distress, resilience, and gender equitable attitudes in the full sample and for girls only and marginally significant improvements in family functioning. Qualitative findings revealed improvements in four domains of girls' well-being-self-efficacy, self-confidence, pro-social behavior, and mental health-through three primary pathways: family members' increased gender equitable attitudes, healthier intrahousehold communication, and greater affective involvement. Findings from this mixed-methods evaluation point to the potential value in merging gender-transformative and whole-family approaches in humanitarian programming to maximize positive impacts for adolescent girls.

Evaluation and improvement of the urban transportation networks resilience in short-term non-recurring traffic congestion: a novel graph connectivity-based criteria

Work or study purpose trips usually make up most intercity trips during peak hours. Being at a destination at a specific time is one of the characteristics of such trips, and the occurrence of non-recurring short-term traffic congestion can damage these trips. Due to the necessity of the subject, this study examines the urban transportation networks resilience (TNR) in the face of non-recurring traffic accidents with short-term effects. This paper defines a novel criteria to measure the urban TNR by developing the connectivity concept graph theory. Then, based on the proposed criteria, the resilience of the Isfahan transportation network (one of Iran's metropolises), has been evaluated, and the critical nodes and arcs of this network have been identified. Also, by performing sensitivity analysis, the role of the travel time satisfaction threshold is discussed. Finally, a series of projects have been introduced, which are believed to increase Isfahan's TNR. The projects have been compared and evaluated based on the proposed method.

Concepts, models, and indicator systems for urban safety resilience: A literature review and an exploration in China

Safety resilient city is a frontier concept of urban safety development and a hot topic in the field of urban safety research. In this paper, the relevant research results of domestic and foreign scholars are reviewed from the perspectives of concepts and models, the evaluation indicator system of urban safety resilience is compared in terms of risk types, evaluation objects, evaluation dimensions and quantitative methods, and the development of international standards for resilient cities is discussed. Based on the literature review, the connotation of the triangular theoretical model of urban safety resilience is explained, and an urban safety resilience evaluation index system applicable to Chinese cities is proposed, which provides support for the development of the national standard “Guide for safety resilient city evaluation” (GB/T 40947-2021). It is applied to six representative cities as examples for evaluation to explore the direction of Chinese urban safety resilience improvement. The pathway for improving the safety resilience of Chinese cities is discussed.