Resilience: Infrastructure & Disaster Response

The population increase and urbanization of the past century ushered in an era of global development and infrastructure construction on a massive scale. As we near the end of the first century of development of the built environment, the societal stresses and costs associated with inefficient and aging infrastructure have come into focus. Historically, infrastructure development has tended to be dominated by brick-and-mortar, labor-intensive approaches with relatively modest adoption and leverage of advanced technologies compared to some other fields. However, given the scope of the national infrastructure challenge, and the high consequence of infrastructure failure, there is a strong motivation for embracing advanced technologies that can lead to substantial cost and performance improvements in the coming years. 

EESA envisions that the major advancements being made in high-performance computing (HPC) and sensors and data analytics–powered by unprecedented rapid data acquisition through high-bandwidth, low-latency communications–will provide a foundation for innovation across the spectrum of infrastructure design, maintenance, operations, and emergency response for a new era of resilient infrastructure. EESA scientists have developed multiple projects assessing the short and long term vulnerability and response of key infrastructure systems to a series of different potential natural hazards.

Learn more about our Resilient Energy, Water and Infrastructure program here.