Disaster recoveryFinding the best ways to protect infrastructure, recover from disasters
Researchers at Sandia National Lab bring the quantitative methods they have developed to the analysis of disasters and how best to recover from them; the researchers look at interdependencies among systems and supply chains, the resilience of various systems, how infrastructure systems fail, cascading effects, and how results might differ if a series of disasters hits instead of just one; the Sandia researchers say they can better quantify the results of such resiliency studies by taking a mathematically rigorous approach to objective assessments
Sandia National Laboratories says it is expecting the unexpected to help the United States prepare for severe weather and figure out the best ways to lessen the havoc hurricanes and other disasters leave on power grids, bridges, roads, and everything else in their path.
“I think our work in critical infrastructure protection is a really great thing to be working on,” said Marianne Walck, director of Geoscience Climate and Consequence Effects. She said Sandia can give policymakers the understanding and information they need to make decisions that lead to systems that are better able to absorb impacts and recover quickly, so-called resilient infrastructure.
A Sandia Lab release reports that Walck was part of a panel at the recent American Geophysical Union’s inaugural Science Policy Conference that highlighted geoscience insights for the economy, public safety and national security. She discussed how Sandia is developing ways to assess the resiliency of the nation’s infrastructure and provide the knowledge officials need to create more resilient systems.
Efforts to analyze natural disasters and other threats grew out of Sandia’s strengths in systems engineering and complex systems analysis, Walck said. Some of the work is done through the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), a DHS program jointly housed at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories. NISAC models and analyzes critical infrastructure, including how interdependent and vulnerable systems may be and the consequences of having them disrupted.
“Given how much of our national and economic security rests on the resiliency of our infrastructure, the rational choice for policymakers is to experiment with models, not the system,” said Lori Parrott, manager of Policy and Decision Support Analytics and the NISAC program for Sandia.
Parrott, who was not part of the panel, said Sandia can better quantify the results of such resiliency studies by taking a mathematically rigorous approach to objective assessments. Sandia has developed high-fidelity computer models of individual infrastructure elements as well as generic network models and dynamic simulations. It is part of critical infrastructure protection programs funded by the Department of Energy (DOE), DHS, Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program, and such agencies as DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Researchers do a risk analysis and quantify uncertainties. They look at interdependencies among systems and supply chains, the resilience of various systems, how infrastructure systems fail, cascading effects and how results might differ if a series of disasters hits instead of just one.
The release notes
