Preparing for Inevitable Surprise: Managing Unexpected Interinfrastructural Connectivities in Post-Disaster Infrastructure Service Restoration

Abstract Disaster preparedness and emergency response planning, both within and around organizations specifically charged with providing critical lifeline infrastructure services, aim at anticipating and mitigating infrastructure failure vulnerabilities and addressing challenges to initial infrastructure service restoration and longer-term recovery efforts. Unfortunately, disaster events yield unanticipated difficulties, and the bigger the disaster, the more this is likely. Further, in many instances, disaster planning lacks adequate preparations and support for unexpected vulnerability of critical infrastructures to the failure of other infrastructures, and requires resilience in resources and strategies to cope with emergent requirements for effective and timely restoration of critical infrastructure service. The research covered here focused specifically on interinfrastructural connectivities (e.g., between water and power) that are undetectable under normal operations and emerge unexpectedly often as a result of the precipitating natural hazard event itself [e.g., a M9 Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest]. We summarize a research study involving personnel from frontline and control center infrastructure operations and emergency response in Oregon and Washington regarding water and wastewater, power, telecommunications, and transportation infrastructures. The goal was to identify the nature and degree of the problem, and its potential solutions, using the M9 CSZ event as a framing case but identifying the salience of the issue for other natural hazards, such as floods and wildfires, as well. Our contribution is to stress the importance of restoration resilience in immediate emergency response and initial restoration of lifeline infrastructure services.