City Digital Twin Hybrid Simulation for Systemic Risk Assessment and Resilience Quantification: Application to Future Flood Projections in Canada

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The 2020 edition of the Global Risk Report by the World Economic Forum continued to identify Failure of climate-change mitigation Extreme weather events; and Natural disasters as the topmost risks in terms of their combined likelihood and impact. In this respect, Canada is in a particularly vulnerable position considering the 2019 Canada's Changing Climate report which highlighted how Canada's warming rate has been double the magnitude of the global average-intensifying the frequency and magnitude of future weather extremes. There is an urgent need for innovative tools to guide practical climate adaption strategies in Canadian cities, especially considering the 2020 analysis by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities-estimating an average annual spending of C$5.3 billion on local (city-level) climate change adaptation measures. The focus over next five years of the research program is driven by the fact that urban floods constitute the costliest natural disasters in Canada, and that the continued operation of critical infrastructure networks (CINs) (e.g., power, stormwater management, and transportation) is key for city resilience under climate stressors. As such, the proposed research focus areas are designed to tackle three key technical challenges pertaining to real city CINs': i) complex interdependence dynamic simulation; ii) cascade failure predictions under future flood projections considering different sources of uncertainty; and iii) optimized resilience management strategies prior to and throughout flood scenario time histories. Specifically, Focus Area I will aim at merging different city CIN functionalities and their interdependence in a temporal Network-of-Networks architecture, operationalized through a novel Interoperability Module-enabling physics-based CIN and flood simulators to interact, thus mimicking CIN interdependence in real cities. Adopting probabilistic performance-based design and financial network cascade risk assessment approaches, research in Focus Area II will pioneer the development of city stress test protocols to predict CIN flood-induced cascade failures under future climate projections incorporating different sources of uncertainty. Finally, Focus Area III will aim at optimizing city resilience management strategies employing sophisticated adaptive network and evolutionary computing techniques and develop interactive data- and 4D (3D+time) visualization interfaces to mobilize the generated research knowledge to stakeholders. The overarching goal of the research program is to create more sophisticated digital twin interoperability analytical tools that can consider different cities' social, economic, ecological and physical dimensions, and other forms of hazard and their interdependence within a multi-hazard environment, in order to mitigate city systemic risks and ensure a resilient Canada's to its changing climate for generations to come.