RAPID: Exploring Impacts of Cascading Failure and Recovery Efforts of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure in Socially Vulnerable Puerto Rican Communities After Hurricane Fiona

飓风菲奥娜严重影响波多黎各西南部，引发山体滑坡，引发洪水，摧毁了整个岛屿的电网。对于1级飓风来说，这种影响是相当不寻常的，这引发了人们对美国领土备灾的担忧，该领土面临着源于长期政策、移民和糟糕预算做法的多层次社会经济危机。众所周知，灾害和随后的恢复工作加剧了边缘化群体的社会经济差距，但缺乏对这些群体如何受到关键基础设施的连锁故障和恢复进程中的拖延的影响的了解。虽然传播和信息相互依存关系在分析连锁故障方面的作用变得越来越重要，但它们与飓风后恢复活动的联系以及对社区恢复的综合影响尚未得到广泛研究或系统记录。这一快速反应研究补助金(RAPID)奖支持收集时间敏感的数据，以研究飓风引起的电力和交通网络连锁故障对社会脆弱的波多黎各社区的影响，并了解CI恢复活动与更快的社区恢复之间的关系。研究结果将为基于社区的多基础设施最优恢复重建策略的制定填补重要的数据空白。本研究将量化电网和交通系统的连锁故障对社会弱势社区的影响，并捕捉社区恢复过程中CI恢复相互依赖的动态关系。除了从公开来源收集的数据外，研究小组还将对应急管理人员和基础设施运营者进行访谈和重点小组调查，以了解对受灾最严重的波多黎各社区的多层面影响，并调查恢复决定如何与挑战和资源限制相关联。该小组还将对社会脆弱性高的社区的家庭进行重点小组调查，以记录他们因飓风造成的基础设施故障和社区恢复延迟造成的实际和预期损害。该项目将产生有价值的信息，以更好地为决策者提供信息，以预测CI系统的未来中断并规划高效和公平的恢复战略。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Hurricane Fiona severely impacted Southwestern Puerto Rico, provoking landslides, unleashing flooding across the Island, and obliterating the power grid. Such impacts are quite unusual for a Category 1 hurricane, raising concerns about disaster-preparedness of the US Territory that faces a multilayered socioeconomic crisis rooted in long-standing policy, migration, and poor budget practices. While it is well-known that disasters and subsequent recovery efforts exacerbate the socioeconomic disparities among marginalized groups, there is a lack of understanding of how these groups are being impacted by the cascading critical infrastructure (CI) failures and delays in the restoration process. While the role of CI interdependencies has gained importance for analyzing cascading failures, their linkage to restoration activities after a hurricane and the compounding effect on community recovery have not yet been extensively studied or systematically documented. This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) award supports the collection of time-sensitive data to study the impacts of cascading hurricane-induced failures of electric and transportation networks on socially vulnerable Puerto Rican communities and to understand the relationships between CI restoration activities and faster community recovery. The research findings will fill an important data gap for the development of community-based multi-infrastructure optimal recovery and reconstruction strategies.This research will quantify the impacts of cascading failures of power grid and transportation systems on socially vulnerable communities and capture the dynamic relationships of CI restoration interdependencies with the community recovery process. In addition to data collected from publicly available sources, the research team will conduct interviews and focused-group surveys of the emergency managers and infrastructure operators to understand the multidimensional impacts on the hardest-hit Puerto Rican communities and investigate how the restoration decisions are associated with the challenges and resource constraints. The team will also conduct a focused-group survey of the households from communities of high social vulnerability to document their actual and perceived harms owing to hurricane-induced infrastructure failure and the delayed community recovery. This project will generate valuable information to better inform decision-makers to anticipate future disruptions in CI systems and plan for efficient and equitable restoration strategies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.