Project drawing on recovery lessons from Hurricane Sandy aims to improve U.S. resilience and disaster preparedness
Lead PI: Satish Ukkusuri (Purdue CE)
Co-PIs: Seungyoon Lee (Purdue Brian Lamb School of Communication), Shreyas Sundaram (Purdue ECE), Laura Siebeneck (University of North Texas)
Abstract: Understanding the recovery of communities after disruptions has important implications for efficiently allocating resources, better planning for disasters, and reducing time and cost of recovery. Virtually all communities are embedded in highly interdependent social and physical infrastructure. This coupling between social and physical networks can lead to complex cascading effects that cannot be understood by looking at these networks in isolation. The full implications of these interdependencies for the resilience of communities and their ability to recover after disasters are not currently understood. This research seeks an understanding of the underlying factors that lead to resilience and recovery of interdependent social and physical networks after disasters. The researchers will collect data from communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy to create and test modeling approaches for improved knowledge of both social and physical factors that lead to recovery. It will also lead to a better understanding of the interdependencies between the social and physical systems, and will identify potential tipping points where small changes in the social and physical systems significantly impact the recovery of the overall system. The findings from the study will allow governmental and emergency agencies to take actions that will accelerate system recovery and enhance its resilience.
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