Integrated DEsign and control of Sustainable CommUnities during Emergencies

Project Information

IDEal reSCUE

Grant agreement ID: 637842

DOI

10.3030/637842

Project closed

EC signature date 19 October 2015

Start date 1 November 2015

End date 30 April 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 271 138,00

EU contribution

€ 1 271 138,00

Coordinated by

POLITECNICO DI TORINO
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - IDEal reSCUE (Integrated DEsign and control of Sustainable CommUnities during Emergencies)

Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2021-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Recently, the concept of resilience has been introduced in the disaster mitigation and management field, therefore the project IDEAL RESCUE is addressing a novel method to assess the performance of critical infrastructures and their interdependencies. The ground breaking potential of the research is the insertion of the “Emotions” in the human decision making process which affects the emergency response of infrastructures, as proven by recent disasters. A framework has been proposed for measuring resilience at different spatial and temporal scales using seven dimensions that have been combined using a multilayered approach and developing a hybrid model of the community. A virtual community model named “Ideal City” freely inspired to the city of Turin has been developed that includes around 23000 buildings and about 900000 agents together with all the main critical infrastructures. Both city scale earthquake damages and search and rescue operations can be simulated with the proposed model. The project has opened a new field of research in hybrid modelling by combining the potentialities of network and agent-based models, considering the anxiety effects generated by the crowd and their influence on the evacuation delays. This project has a significant impact on the society because the proposed framework can assist asset managers in developing and choosing the best policies and strategies during emergencies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The MAIN RESULTS achieved in the project are:
• RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK: A framework has been implemented for measuring community resilience at different spatial and temporal scales.
While the framework has been presented in qualitative terms before the start of the project, during the project an analytical quantification of the different dimensions has been provided using a multi-layered approach that proved the feasibility of the proposed method. The seven dimensions that are identified for measuring resilience are characterized by performance metrics combined using a multi-layered approach that can be applied on a hybrid model of a city for example. Therefore, once a hybrid community model is defined, the proposed framework can be applied to measure its performance against any type of disaster.
Several critical infrastructures have been analyzed and modeled during the project such as an hospital network, that has been calibrated using factorial analysis on a sample of hospitals located in San Francisco, California, and in China and cascading hazard has been applied.
• LIFELINES: a Transportation, water, gas and telecommunications networks have been analyzed, proposing and comparing different resilience indices to measure the performance of these networks during their restoration process. For example, for the gas network a physical-based methodology is proposed to compute the effects of the pipeline damage induced by the ground shaking and permanent soil deformation. Instead, the socio technical networks have been modeled using agent-based models (ABMs). The novelty of this approach is including in ABMs the human behavior model, considering the anxiety effects generated by the crowd. The proposed hybrid model also considers the interdependency between the earthquake evacuation process and the corresponding damage expressed in term of fragility curves, but it can be applied in other disasters such as blasts and terrorist attacks.
• VIRTUAL CITY: a city that is freely inspired to the town of Turin has been developed in a software written in Python code including all building and infrastructure data available by the public authorities. Water, power and transportation network has been already implemented and the interdependencies among them have been modeled. The entire virtual city model has been implemented in an open-source platform written in Phyton and a friendly graphical user interface has been developed. The visualization of the agent-based model results has been realized in a computer platform called UNITY that allow user to enter directly in the virtual reality model of IDEALCITY.
DISSEMINATION
The PI and his team joined several international congresses to disseminate the results of the research. Furthermore, the PI organized an International Workshop series that is focusing on community Resilience. The first event has been held in Turin, (September 2016), while the second workshop has been held in Nanjing and Shanghai (October 2018). The PI attended several working groups in Rome, especially with ENEL Foundation to investigate the possibility to establish joint projects. Additional special sessions have been presented in international conferences to show the achievements of the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

What makes this project unique with respect to others is the modelling of human behaviour within the context of infrastructure interdependencies, using a layered approach based on the application of the Input-Output Inoperability Matrix (IIM) and ABMs. In fact, critical infrastructures and human behaviour are strongly correlated when the functionality of a community is limited due to emergencies.
Interdependencies between critical infrastructures create new challenges that have been addressed at several decision-making levels involving multiple stakeholders, and modelled from various perspectives; therefore it has been impossible for a single model to address all concerns of infrastructure interdependencies so far. The novel concept consists in developing a new approach to model infrastructures and their interdependencies. An integrated hybrid model has been developed by coupling agent-based models and Network models.
The research has lead to an advanced understanding of risk assessment and considerably a better management of existing civil infrastructures. This will have significant impact on the society by improving the resiliency of the civil infrastructure systems. The developed framework can assist asset managers in developing and choosing the best policies and strategies during emergencies by performing real-time simulations.

Disaster do happen

managing emergencies