In the wake of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, infrastructure service providers and public officials realized that restoration plans for the multiple systems that were damaged in the attacks would be better informed by an understanding of the vulnerabilities introduced by co-location and system interdependencies. This began a decades-long effort at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to develop computer-aided decision support models for the restoration of critical civil and social infrastructures damaged by an extreme event such as a hurricane while considering interdependencies between the systems. This presentation will explain the origin and development of a suite of these decision-support tools, the stakeholder involvement process used to elicit user needs and secure feedback, and their potential value as a planning and training tool for coastal communities vulnerable to hurricanes, storm surge, and coastal flooding. It will also discuss an artificial community created to model these activities without compromising information on the vulnerabilities of actual infrastructure systems.

Richard G. Little is a private consultant on matters of infrastructure policy and a Visiting Research Scholar in disaster mitigation at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He was a Senior Fellow in the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California (USC) and Director of the USC Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy prior to retiring in 2012. Before joining USC, he was Director of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council (NRC), where he directed a program of studies in building and infrastructure research. Mr. Little has been certified by examination by the American Institute of Certified Planners and is Editor of Public Works Management & Policy. He received a B.S. in Geology and a M.S. in Urban-Environmental Studies from RPI and was elected to the National Academy of Construction in 2008.

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