Objective Resilience: Applications

This chapter discusses several representative studies on resilience assessment of the individual systems/components of a community. Evolutions in community resilience are reviewed. Studies of the importance of critical infrastructures and lifelines in communities, are evaluated. A summary is included of studies that have focused on businesses and households as two other main systems of the community that may be heavily impacted by a natural disaster and are critical components of community recovery and resilience metrics. Development of frameworks accounting for interdependent systems of a community are recommended, along with using risk-based decision-making tools, to enhance the resilience of a community to address shortcomings and successfully move toward community resilience.

To quantify risk, protective design practitioners have considered several sources of vulnerability, for either structural or nonstructural elements, while assessing critical infrastructure systems (CIS). This chapter proposes overcoming some of the limitations noted in the current practice of risk assessment of blast-loaded CIS by integrating postblast functionality loss and downtime within a unified PRA framework. To facilitate the integration of resilience concepts within the broader PRA framework, relevant definitions are reviewed. A broad overview is given of some approaches that can be applied in an in-depth assessment of critical infrastructure threatened by blast events of malicious origin. The nontrivial variability documented in key wavefront metrics, further compounded by the extreme uncertainty associated with the defining variables of a blast scenario (e.g., charge mass) clearly demonstrate the necessity of a sound probabilistic approach.

The objective of this chapter is to study the resilience of health care systems and to provide a snapshot of the resilience of several countries' health care systems. A brief summary is provided of literature covering resilience assessment in general, and health care systems resilience in particular. Unlike traditional resilience models in which recovery is almost monotonic, the pandemic hazard COVID-19 has no effective recovery treatment and has shown recurrence after some recovery had occurred. Proposed generic methods for quantifying resilience are presented and discussed. A case study of resilience assessments of health care systems under the COVID-19 hazard scenario is included.

Resilience is an indicator of the preparedness and adaptability of a civil infrastructure system. The New York City metropolitan transportation network has been chosen as a case study to illustrate the measured performance and resilience of a major urban transportation network. This chapter provides a standardized approach to measuring the resilience of critical infrastructure systems and illustrates how to apply this method to identify the most efficient approach to bolstering network resilience. Several fundamental characteristics are common to the definition of resilience across ecological, economic, and hazard-based research. Four aspects of the resiliency concept are outlined: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity. Specific information is provided regarding storm surge, which is defined as an abnormal rise of water precipitated by both low pressure and wind speeds of a hurricane moving over shallow coastal waters.

Rapid transit systems (RTS) play a significant role in well-being and overall quality of life, wherever they are located. This chapter discusses the issues that can reduce or enhance RTS resilience in an objective manner, as well as some of the important policies of RTS that can impact their resilience. The different resilience components are presented in the context of the definition of resilience. Case studies of actual hazards are included, along with RTS responses and subsequent recoveries from losses. Some publicly available resilience assessment methods are presented that are specifically focused on RTS. Two objective resilience assessment approaches are detailed for two main components of RTS: mass transit stations and tunnels. A summary of recommended practices that can be helpful in enhancing RTS resilience is included.

This chapter explores how climate change (CC) and global warming (GW) impact civil infrastructures and how civil infrastructures can help in mitigation of, or adaptation to, CC dangers. The relationship between CC and resilience, that is, climate resilience from a civil infrastructure perspective, is examined. A summary of some useful objective methods is provided. Resilience dimensions (multidisciplinary considerations, multihazards considerations, cascading events, and resilience management) are discussed in the context of CC and civil infrastructures. Numerous case studies of the relevance of the CC manifestations are included, along with a set of beneficial recommended practices.