Finding the best ways to protect infrastructure, recover from disasters
that Walck said in an interview before the Science Policy Conference that good models allow analysts to quantify consequences of disruptions in very complex systems. “If you don’t have a good model to look at or to exercise in terms of running through these various scenarios, you may not understand what could really happen,” she said.
A flood, for example, could damage roads, collapse bridges, and take down power lines, so officials have to decide what to rebuild first, how best to rebuild, and how much that will cost, she said.
“This isn’t just saying, ‘Oh, I think that hurricane is going to knock out this particular chemical plant.’ You have to think about what that means in terms of getting critical chemicals to industries. What societal or economic effects will result if this particular product isn’t supplied? There are lots of different interactions that go on,” Walck said. “It’s just illuminating to understand what the impacts are if you’ve got particular types of infrastructure.”
Analytic information can better inform policymakers so they can decide how to craft policies, how to promote incentives to create resilient infrastructure or how to prioritize recovery and restoration, Parrott said.
Each year, NISAC undertakes projects analyzing various risks. Given a particular disaster, how could people be evacuated along the roads? How much damage would hurricane-force winds cause to power lines, and would that cause governments to consider requiring underground lines in the future? Then there are rebuilding considerations. Would it be better, for example, to focus on repairing rail transportation routes in a particular area rather than trying to repair all routes simultaneously?
NISAC has developed expertise in analyzing subjects and developing models that cover everything from national transportation to interdependent supply chains. Sandia’s long-term analysis projects help keep data, models and analytic expertise current so they’re useful for crisis decision support, Parrott said.
NISAC has worked on a number of hurricanes, including Hurricane Irene, the only one to threaten the U.S. mainland last year. Although small compared to other hurricanes, Irene was unusual. Rather than striking a concentrated area, Irene traveled up the East Coast, threatening a large swath of significant infrastructure.
Officials asked NISAC to analyze Irene’s likely impacts while the storm moved toward shore and to deliver an analysis in less than 12 hours. NISAC came through, and its analysis was used to brief FEMA and first responders, as well as the DHS and DOE, Walck said.
