Assessment of critical infrastructure resilience to flooding using a response curve approach

Abstract

Following a flood the functioning of critical infrastructure (CI), such as power and transportation networks, plays an important role in recovery and the resilience of the city. Previous research investigated resilience indicators, however, there is no method in the literature to quantify the resilience of CI to flooding specifically or to quantify the effect of measures. This new method to quantify CI resilience to flooding proposes an expected annual disruption (EADIS) metric and curve of disruption versus likelihood. The units used for the EADIS metric for disruption are in terms of people affected over time (person × days). Using flood modelling outputs, spatial infrastructure, and population data as inputs, this metric is used to benchmark CI resilience to flooding and test the improvement with resilience enhancing measures. These measures are focused on the resilience aspects robustness, redundancy and flexibility. Relative improvements in resilience were quantified for a case study area in Toronto, Canada and it was found that redundancy, flexibility, and robustness measures resulted in 44, 30, and 48% reductions in EADIS respectively. While there are limitations, results suggest that this method can effectively quantify CI resilience to flooding and quantify relative improvements with resilience enhancing measures for cities.