Investigating Social Vulnerability, Exposure, and Transport Network Disruption in the Mid-Atlantic Region

Abstract

There is a clear and present desire from government authorities to actualize processes and procedures that place equity at the forefront of decision-making and improve supply chain resilience. Following a federal executive order, several agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency have instituted initiatives focused on equity in resilience planning, recognizing the variance in how different populations are impacted during disturbances. To actualize policy and programmatic priorities, decision makers need tools that are theoretically grounded yet computationally simplistic and adoptable for participants outside of academia. Thus, developing methodology that is deployable at scale within the framework of average agency capabilities remains critical. This research seeks to leverage network science, transportation theory, and social vulnerability analysis to explore the relationship between the exposure of counties to food supply disruptions through the road and highway transportation network and their community social vulnerability. This result highlights that in our food transportation network, targeted attacks are not more impactful than random removals when fewer nodes are removed. Our results also found that the most exposed counties are generally in the southeastern portion of the region. In our study area, a large part of the exposure is due to the high food-inflow demand. The framework presented is both theoretically grounded and computationally simplistic and presents a potential strategy for understanding social vulnerability alongside critical infrastructure resilience.