Integrated regional resilience assessment platform for interdependent systems

Computer simulations are critical for assessing the resilience of civil infrastructure to natural hazards. To support efficient and comprehensive analyses that account for interdependencies among infrastructure systems, an integrated platform that spans the full resilience evaluation process, from damage to recovery, is essential. This paper presents such a platform by linking SimCenter’s R2D tool, together with embedded infrastructure system operation simulators, to the recovery simulator pyrecodes. Compared to state-of-the-art post-disaster recovery simulation tools, the proposed platform offers three key advantages: first, it employs high-fidelity traffic flow and potable water delivery simulators to improve the accuracy of resource allocation and the representation of system interdependencies in recovery simulations; second, it streamlines continuous system performance evaluation for interdependent systems considering the change in both resource supply and demand, thereby facilitating quantitative assessment of system resilience; and third, it provides an integrated open-source framework that supports reconfiguration and extension, enabling the continuous incorporation of newer and more advanced regional-scale simulators and allowing flexible levels of simulation fidelity across infrastructure systems. Thus, the proposed simulation platform establishes a unique and foundational framework for future integrated regional resilience modeling and assessment. The integration is achieved through two application programming interfaces (APIs): one connecting regional damage and recovery simulators, and the other linking the recovery simulator with infrastructure-specific service generation and dispatch (operation) simulators. The resulting open-source platform provides a user-friendly interface for hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and recovery analysis, as well as resilience quantification. The platform’s utility is demonstrated in a case study of a California community subjected to an M w 7.0 earthquake, where damage and recovery of buildings, bridges, tunnels, roadways, and water distribution pipelines are simulated. The case study illustrates the ability of the tools to quantify resilience comprehensively with high spatial and temporal resolution. Although only one case study and two system operation simulators are presented, the APIs are designed to integrate a broad range of hazard, exposure, damage, recovery, and operation simulators (e.g., PyPSA and pandapower for power system modeling), beyond those featured here.