Toward Community-Centered Planning of Infrastructure Restorations by Integrating Community Demographics and Public Facilities

Abstract

Critical lifeline infrastructures are increasingly facing disruptions from natural and human-made disasters. To reduce disaster impacts on communities, there is a paradigm shift toward community-centered planning of infrastructure restorations. Existing studies often conduct community-centered planning by incorporating community demographics, such as population and social vulnerability, but fail to include public facilities (e.g., hospitals and police stations) that also play a critical role in community functioning. This study seeks to bridge this gap by integrating a full set of community factors, including not just those related to humans, but also those concerning public facilities. Such an information integration perspective is applied to determine the restoration priority of damaged infrastructure components. Then, a priority-integrated optimization model is built for allocating restoration resources efficiently. For illustration purposes, the study examines the restorations of interdependent infrastructure systems, i.e., power and water infrastructures, in Shelby County, US. The results indicate that, compared to the approaches that ignore public facilities, the proposed approach significantly facilitates the restoration of infrastructure nodes serving critical public facilities (e.g., hospitals) without increasing the overall restoration duration. Theoretically, this presented study emphasizes the necessity of including a full set of community factors to achieve community-centered planning of infrastructure restorations. Methodologically, it offers a structured approach that simplifies the transition from integrating various community factors to scheduling infrastructure restoration resources. Practically, this study’s approach aligns closely with existing procedures in utility companies, making it more readily adaptable for them.