Modelling urban systems interdependencies
FRS researchers developed a framework to model interdependencies among households, businesses, and infrastructure systems and further our understanding of these systems' response to disruptions.
Urban systems, composed of households, businesses, and infrastructure systems, are continuously evolving and expanding. As a result, the complexity and interdependence, as well as the impact of disruptions on these systems are rapidly increasing.
In what ways are these systems interdependent and to what extent do these interdependencies influence their responses to disruptions?
In the paper “external page A framework for modelling interdependencies among households, businesses, and infrastructure systems; and their response to disruptions,” Dr Iwo Dubaniowski and Prof. Hans Heinimann developed a model that provides an accurate portrayal of the emergent behaviour of systems and the impact of disruptions on these systems in an urban setting.
The modelling framework consists of two components: an agent that mimics the metabolism of a business or a household in the way that it obtains supplies from and provides output to infrastructure systems; and a network of socioeconomic agents that exchange resources based on a price mechanism. Under disruption, this network of agents would self-organise dynamically such that resources are reallocated based on the cost of production and transportation.
Our investigation resulted in the development of a business/household agent and a dynamically self-organizing mechanism of network coordination under disruption based on costs for production and transportation.
Through a series of simulations, it is proven that this is a feasible model for analysing the responses of interdependent urban systems to disruptions. Out of the different disruption scenarios, a combination of the failure of infrastructure links and production processes resulted in the most negative impact.
Further, findings show that the reconfigurability of networks affect the extent to which systems are affected by disruptions. Systems that are less reconfigurable, such as water or energy, are more negatively impacted under disruption than networks that are more reconfigurable, such as transportation.
The paper, which was published in Reliability Engineering & System Safety, stems from Dr Iwo Dubaniowski’s doctoral studies. He was part of the Modelling Complex Socio-Technical Infrastructure Systems module in the first phase of the Future Resilient Systems programme.