RAPID/Collaborative Research: San Bruno, California, September 9, 2010, Gas Pipeline Explosion and Fire

快速反应研究基金(RAPID)为研究圣布鲁诺爆炸和火灾提供资金。2010年9月9日，在旧金山郊区的加利福尼亚州圣布鲁诺，一条30英寸长的钢质天然气管道起火起火，最终导致7名居民死亡，数十座房屋受损或被毁。一个跨学科的实地小组将通过收集关于事前建筑、地形和天气条件的数据；火灾蔓延和扑灭的速度和方式；以及多组织协调和决策的要素，对整个工程和社会科学领域的事件进行全面的描述。该项目的目的是：(A)提高对城市火灾如何蔓延和被扑灭的了解，(B)支持下一代城市火灾模拟模型的开发和验证，以及(C)提出复原力理论。学者们目前正在研究下一代火灾蔓延模型，采用基于物理学的方法，该方法包含更多变量，并明确考虑建筑组成、内容和城市设计的可变性。然而，作为下一代模型，这些模型缺乏在实际火灾场景中进行验证的机会。因此，对圣布鲁诺火灾的分析将通过改善对城市火灾蔓延和扑灭的理解，并允许对现有模型的验证和改进，显著地促进知识的发展。事故指挥系统(ICS)等管理结构依赖于熟悉其使用的组织之间的信息流，在具有公认程序的情况下。通过研究存在系统熟悉性，但信息粗略和模棱两可，程序临时制定的协调，这项研究将提炼我们对指挥结构作为组织间决策工具的相对优势的知识。通过明确考虑基础设施能力和管理系统的相互作用，该项目重塑了关键基础设施，使其包括人类操作员及其深思熟虑的决策和干预。研究小组预计将产生一些更广泛的影响。这些措施包括开发和传播改进的居民区火灾蔓延模型。这些模型一旦得到验证，就可以为消防工程师和城市规划者在结构和空间设计中提供知识库，以及在地震、山体滑坡或恐怖活动后可能面临此类情况的消防员提供信息。关于活动多组织协调的调查结果将支持实地一级的决策和协调办法。个人投资促进机构教授许多工程和应急管理课程，这些课程将确保将调查结果直接或通过出版物以及在相关会议和专题讨论会上的陈述传达给用户群体。此外，研究生还将培养灾后实地工作的技能，包括工程和社会科学数据的收集、分析和理论发展。在更大的范围内，最近大规模的基础设施故障，如明尼阿波利斯I35大桥的坍塌，突显了美国基础设施的历史和状况。通过这项研究开发的信息可能会为制定有关重要系统中迅速增长的漏洞的政策提供信息。

This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) provides funding to study the San Bruno explosion and fire. On September 9, 2010, in San Bruno, California, a suburb of San Francisco, a 30-inch steel natural gas pipeline exploded in flames, igniting a fire that ultimately killed seven residents and damaged or destroyed dozens of houses. An interdisciplinary field team will provide a holistic account of the event across the engineering and social sciences by gathering data on pre-event building, topography, and weather conditions; the rate and modes of fire spread and suppression; and elements of multiorganizational coordination and decisionmaking. The aims of the project are to: (a) improve understanding of how urban fires spread and are suppressed, (b) support development and validation of next-generation urban fire simulation models, and (c) advance theories of resilience. Scholars are now at work on the next generation of fire spread modeling, employing physics-based approaches that encompass many more variables and that explicitly consider variability in building composition, contents, and urban design. As the next generation of models, however, these have lacked opportunities for validation in actual fire scenarios. Thus analysis of the San Bruno fire will appreciably advance knowledge by improving understanding of urban fire spread and suppression, and by permitting validation and refinement of existing models. Management structures such as the Incident Command System (ICS) depend on information flow amongst organizations that are familiar with its use, in situations with recognized procedures. By studying coordination where system familiarity was present, but information was sketchy and ambiguous and procedures improvised, the study will refine our knowledge of the relative strengths of command structures as tools for interorganization decisionmaking. By explicitly considering the interaction of infrastructure capacities and management systems, the project recasts critical infrastructure to include human operators and their deliberate decisionmaking and interventions.The research team anticipates a number of broader impacts. These include the development and dissemination of improved fire-spread models for conflagrations in residential neighborhoods. These models, once validated, can inform the knowledge base of fire protection engineers and urban planners in their design of structures and spaces, as well as firefighters who may be confronted with such situations following earthquakes, landslips, or terrorist activity. Ground-level decisionmaking and coordination approaches will be bolstered by findings on the multiorganizational coordination of the event. The PIs teach numerous engineering and emergency management courses which will ensure that findings reach the user community both directly and through publications and presentations at relevant conferences and symposia. In addition, graduate students will develop skill in post-disaster fieldwork, to include engineering and social-science data gathering, analysis, and theory development. On a larger scale, recent sizable infrastructure failures, such as the collapse of the I35 bridge in Minneapolis, have highlighted the age and condition of US infrastructure. Information developed through this study may inform policymaking regarding burgeoning vulnerabilities in vital systems.