Agent-Based Modeling for the Evaluation of Community Resilience In Silico

From the paper

Abstract

not-yet-known not-yet-known not-yet-known unknown Civil infrastructure is a system through which humans inter- act with each other and their environment, making it essen- tial for community well-being. Such systems, however, de- grade over time and become less usable, either due to pro- gressive wear or abrupt damage. Therefore, it becomes nec- essary to allocate resources to maintain the infrastructure and thereby ensure the community’s well-being. However, the relationship between infrastructure condition and com- munity well-being is unclear and challenging to quantify. This is especially true in locations that are impacted by climate change or other significant forcing factors. Current compu- tational models often struggle to predict cascading nonlin- ear events that occur during system failures. This paper in- troduces a computational method to quantitatively analyze the impact of infrastructure on community well-being, com- bining agent-based modeling (ABM) and network robustness measurement. We specifically examine the town of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, where permafrost thaw due to global warming threat- ens a substantial amount of infrastructure. The results show that the breakdown of critical infrastructure progressively weak- ens community access to essential resources, leading to much lower robustness. Additionally, our simulations indicate that smaller household sizes and redundant infrastructure design prove beneficial for sustaining resource accessibility and fos- tering close social connections within the community. These insights offer valuable guidance for understanding the com- plex systems interplay among communities, infrastructure, and the environment, thereby informing strategies to build more sustainable and resilient systems in remote areas such as Utqiaġvik.