Integrating social capital with urban infrastructure networks for more resilient cities

Abstract

More than half of the world's population now lives in urban environments, which concentrate services and infrastructure to satisfy the material needs of a growing number of inhabitants. The interdependencies between physical infrastructure systems are required for cities to function efficiently, but simultaneously expose cities to new hazards. Failures that emerge from one infrastructure system and cascade through these interdependencies are becoming larger and more frequent due to climate change and growing urban environments. Because of the uneven distribution of resources and basic services, cascade failures often exacerbate pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities. Human communities rely on both social capital and infrastructure services to prepare for, manage, and recover from these challenging scenarios, but the overlap between social and physical infrastructure creates unpredictable feedback dynamics. While prior research has focused on either social capital or physical infrastructure in urban disaster management, an integrative view of these two perspectives is seldom explored. In this paper, the feedback mechanisms between the physical and social layers of different urban designs are identified and analyzed to optimize relief response. Methodologically, we identify cities with high accessibility that have undergone disasters. From these cities, we measure their physical and social resilience indicators before and after disaster as a means to evaluate the impact of accessibility on disaster relief and preparedness. We will supplement this empirical analysis with a simulation that captures a cascade failure/disaster through a multilayer infrastructure and social network model.