Quality function deployment based conceptual framework for designing resilient urban infrastructure system of systems

Abstract

The frequent natural hazards and their significant impacts in recent years have repeatedly highlighted the vulnerability of urban infrastructure systems and their lack of system resilience. The ever increasing interdependencies between urban infrastructure systems have further complicated the situation, causing considerable risks of failure propagation. Considering that the properties of urban infrastructure systems including their level of resilience are mainly determined at the design stage, the authors aim to propose a Quality Function Deployment (QFD) based conceptual framework for designing resilient urban infrastructure system of systems (SoS). As a preliminary effort towards this goal, this paper mainly focuses on developing the first matrix in the QFD based framework. Steps to identify resilience criteria and principles are presented, the questionnaire-based method to determine the main body of the first matrix is described, and the approach to work out practical design schemes is explained. Lastly, this paper summarizes the main strength of the proposed framework as well as its limitations, and discusses directions for future research.