Infrastructure interdependencies simulation (I2Sim) system model and toolbox

The interdependencies between infrastructures have become more complex with the growth of the civilization. As a result, the cascading effects on the system caused by a failure of one infrastructure became larger and unpredictable. As seen from the major disasters such as the Sichuan earthquake in China, understanding infrastructure interdependencies and allocating resources efficiently in the system can facilitate the recovery process significantly. As a part of Canadian Government’s effort to develop innovative ways to mitigate large disaster situations and grow resiliences of systems, Joint Infrastructure Interdependencies Research Program (JIIRP) has been formed. The UBC’s Infrastructure Interdependencies Simulation (I2Sim) group led by Dr. Jose Marti participated to study decision making for critical linkages in infrastructure networks. At the end of the program period, its achievement was recognized, and the I2Sim group was selected to develop a simulator for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. As a part of this research, the concept of cells, channels, and tokens along with components consisting the cells were developed. The core of the cells and the channels are formed by the Human Readable Tables (HRT) which describe the relationship between the inputs and the outputs of the unit. The HRT allows a reasonable prediction of the real life system even with limited data. As a result, the infrastructure owners do not have to disclose the confidential operational information of the system. The test case models were built based on the UBC Campus first and extended to the Olympics sites in Vancouver. To simulate the test cases, a customized Matlab/Simulink toolbox called I2Sim was developed. The I2Sim toolbox follows a graphical drag-and-drop box format. Since the user of the toolbox only has to deal with the graphical interface, even the non-experts can build a case easily. The main improved features included in the new version is that the effect of time delay in the channels and the human flow. The test case results helps producing an optimal resource allocation and the restoration priorities during disasters.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat