Resilience of Infrastructure Systems and Communities

Background

The reliable functioning of infrastructures is critical to national security and fundamental to social, economic, and environmental well-being. The Department of Homeland Security has identified 16 critical infrastructure sectors necessary for the functionality of communities and cities. These infrastructures are not isolated but interconnected at different levels and embedded inside of social systems. It includes cultural values in communities and organizational arrangements in utilities. There are also external stressors such as extreme weather which can impact the systems performance.

Over the past decade, each sector has become more integrated, advocates resource sharing and operational research interventions to improve the performance measures.  This implies the importance of understanding the collective performance and decision-making behavior for sustainable infrastructure management.

Objective

This research seeks to develop an integrative decision making framework with consideration of physical-based, cyber-based, and socioeconomic-based interdependencies between and within critical infrastructures for evaluating strategies to enhance the resilience of infrastructure systems. The specific objectives include: 1) develop an integrated mathematical model considering socioeconomic-based interdependencies and examine the infrastructure operational strategies; 2) develop a multi-method adaptive simulator (agent-based and system dynamics) for stakeholders to quantify the impacts of cyber-physical failures and potential strategies for addressing failures; 3) develop a Resilient Infrastructures Learning Game for public participation and dissemination to build awareness, knowledge, and capacity for recognizing interdependencies among critical infrastructures by stakeholders; and 4) develop user-friendly, web-based decision support tools for rehabilitation decisions.

Publications

  1. McAlister, M.M., Sripathanallur Murali, P., Zhang, Q., Wells, E.C., Mohebbi, S., (2023). “Improving and Quantifying Organizational Resilience for Sustainable Management of Interdependent Infrastructure Systems: A Multi-level System Dynamics Approach”, Submitted.
  2. Mohebbi, S., Aslani, B., Dsouza, M.H., (2023). “Impacts of Coordination Schemes on Infrastructure Networks Resilience: A New Graph-empowered Agent-based Simulation”, Submitted.
  3. Mohebbi, S., Dsouza, M.H., Floyd, R.W., (2022). Development of User-friendly Tools and Decision-making Algorithms for Service Life Design of ABC Bridges, Report No.: ABC-UTC-2016-C3-OU02 -Final. [Read more]
  4. Rahimi-Golkhandan, A., Aslani, B., Mohebbi, S., (2022). “Predictive resilience of interdependent water-transportation infrastructures: a sociotechnical approach”, Socioeconomic Planning Sciences, 80, 101166.
  5. Aslani, B., Mohebbi, S., (2021). “Data on predictive resilience of interdependent water-transportation infrastructures: a sociotechnical approach”, Data in Brief, 39, 107512.
  6. Mohebbi, S., Barnett K, Aslani B., (2021). “Decentralized resource allocation for interdependent infrastructures resilience: a cooperative game approach”, International Transactions in Operational Research, 28(6), 3394-3415.
  7. Mohebbi, S., Zhang, Q., Wells, E.C., Zhao, T., Nguyen, H., Li, M., Abdel-Mottaleb, N., Uddin, S., Lu, Q., Wakhungu, M., Wu, Z., Zhang, Y., Tuladhar, A., Ou, X. (2020). “Cyber-Physical-Social interdependencies and organizational resilience: a review of water, transportation, and cyber infrastructure systems and processes, Sustainable Cities and Societies, 62, 102327.
  8. Badre, A., Mohebbi, S., Soltanisehat, L., (2020). “Secure decentralized decisions to enhance coordination in consolidated hospital systems”, IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, 10(2), 99-112.
  9. Karakoc, D.B., Almoghathawi, Y., Barker, K., González, A.D., Mohebbi, S., (2019). “Community resilience-driven restoration model for interdependent infrastructure networks”, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 38, 101228.

Funding source

Learning Games – Analyzing Individual and Collective Decision Making in Emergency Evacuations, Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (2023-2024), George Mason University, PI, $16,000.

Indigenous Environmental Mapping and Resilience Project (2023), Office of the Provost, George Mason University, Co-PI, $57,000. [Read more]

Green Assessment and Decision GuidancE Tool (GADGET):Toward Pareto-Optimal Investment to Achieve Carbon Neutrality (2022), Institute for a Sustainable Earth, George Mason University, Co-PI. [Read more]

Development of User-Friendly Tools and Decision-Making Algorithms for Service Life Design of ABC Bridges (2021-2022), US DOT ABC-UTC, PI, $45,000. [Read more]

CRISP Type 2: Integrative Decision Making Framework to Enhance the Resiliency of Interdependent Critical Infrastructures (2016-2022), NSF CRISP, Mason PI, $1,963,542. [Read more]

Collaborators

University of South Florida, Florida International University, University of Oklahoma

GRAs / Postdoc

Armin Rahimi-Golkhandan (Postdoc, GMU), Babak Aslani (PhD candidate, GMU), Nischal Newar (MSc student, GMU), Mark Herman Dsouza (MSc student, GMU), Sreekanth Putta (MSc student, GMU), Katherine Barnett (MSc student, OU), Prasuna Mitikiri (MSc student, OU)

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