CLARC: An Artificial Community for Modeling the Effects of Extreme Hazard Events on Interdependent Civil and Social Infrastructure Systems

Abstract

During the development of a suite of computer-aided decision support tools for the restoration of interdependent infrastructures impacted by an extreme natural hazard event, it became apparent that the release of vulnerability data on actual infrastructure systems could raise security concerns. As a result, an artificial and customizable infrastructure dataset was developed based on experiences with creating real, but not public, data that can be used for modeling, analysis, and decision making. The purpose of this paper is to describe the rationale and methodology for assembling the database for customizable artificial community (CLARC), an artificial coastal community of approximately 500,000 people and 1,065 square miles, that includes five civil infrastructure networks (electricity, water, wastewater, transportation, and communications) and social infrastructures, such as public safety, healthcare, and critical commercial services including fuel and banking that communities rely upon during an emergency as well as population and other socio-economic factors. The interdependencies that exist between the civil infrastructure systems and between civil and social infrastructures are included in the dataset and are attributes to assist with modeling and analysis. This paper discusses the dataset in detail, describes why and how it was assembled, and includes a virtual case study that uses the CLARC dataset to simulate the impacts on the civil and social infrastructure of a hypothetical Category 3 hurricane and the community’s response and recovery from that event. The dataset is openly available for use by the research and practitioner communities.