Resilient cities critical infrastructure interdependence: a meta-research

ABSTRACT

Given the unforeseen events that take continue to place worldwide, cities are experiencing rapid transformations. To maintain their basic functions, cities have to be resilient– possess the ability to bounce back to their original state following extreme events. Unfortunately, the behavior of cities is complex because of the interdependence among their comprising infrastructure systems. The current work presents a critical review of research work pertaining to resilience of cities’ critical infrastructure systems. To conduct such review, meta-research is employed through text analytics, in the form of topic modelling, to quantitatively uncover related latent topics in pertinent literature. Subsequently, the identified topics are qualitatively analyzed in terms of established definitions and metrics for resilience as well as adopted simulation approaches for infrastructure systems interdependence. Accordingly, nine common topics and five major research gaps are identified. This meta-research study is a steppingstone towards better understanding of infrastructure systems interdependence simulation and their resilience quantification approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Cities
• complex systems
• meta-research
• resilience
• topic modelling

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from and the fruitful discussions with the research teams of the NSERC-CaNRisk-CREATE program, the INTERFACE Institute and the INViSiONLab.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the financial support of the Ontario Trillium Scholarship Program and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, CaNRisk-CREATE program.

Notes on contributors

May Haggag

May Haggag, M.A.Sc., is a PhD student in the Department of Civil Engineering at McMaster University. She was among the only five University-wide awardees of the 2017 Ontario Trillium Scholarship.

Mohamed Ezzeldin

Mohamed Ezzeldin, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Institute for Multi-hazard Systemic Risk Studies (INTERFACE) at McMaster University.

Wael El-Dakhakhni

Wael El-Dakhakhni, PhD, is the Director of the CaNRisk-NSERC-CREATE Program and the Institute for Multi-hazard Systemic Risk Studies (INTERFACE). He is a Professor in the McMaster University School of Computational Science & Engineering and the Department of Civil Engineering.

Elkafi Hassini

Elkafi Hassini, PhD, is a professor in the DeGroote School of Business. He specializes in data-driven optimization with applications in supply chain management.