Robust emergency management and resiliency planning starts with identifying the problems that emergency managers are likely to face. This includes understanding impacts, risks, opportunities, and vulnerabilities that occur during and after a natural disaster. Traditional hazard risk assessment models (e.g., basic HAZUS) tend to focus on “direct damages” and “indirect impacts” quantified through a variety of engineering and economic modeling techniques. These emphasize accumulated damages in economic terms or use generic damage functions, but often do not provide actionable data regarding specific qualitative local hazard impact concerns, such as potential communications disruptions and facility disruptions due to a damaged generator. The Hazard Consequence Threshold Model integrates qualitative critical infrastructure concerns, collected directly from local facility managers, into numerical storm models. By identifying “Consequence Thresholds” for specific critical infrastructure elements, the identified concerns may be directly linked to the storm prediction models in near real-time or for planning purposes.
Robust emergency management and resiliency planning starts with identifying the problems that emergency managers are likely to face. This includes understanding impacts, risks, opportunities, and vulnerabilities that occur during and after a natural disaster. Traditional hazard risk assessment models (e.g., basic HAZUS) tend to focus on “direct damages” and “indirect impacts” quantified through a variety of engineering and economic modeling techniques. These emphasize accumulated damages in economic terms or use generic damage functions, but often do not provide actionable data regarding specific qualitative local hazard impact concerns, such as potential communications disruptions and facility disruptions due to a damaged generator. The Hazard Consequence Threshold Model integrates qualitative critical infrastructure concerns, collected directly from local facility managers, into numerical storm models. By identifying “Consequence Thresholds” for specific critical infrastructure elements, the identified concerns may be directly linked to the storm prediction models in near real-time or for planning purposes.
Consequence Thresholds include five components:
- The asset – An asset the stakeholder perceives can be directly impacted by a storm force (e.g., a generator, electrical transformer, computer server).
- The specific location of the asset – The latitude and longitude of the asset the stakeholder believes can be directly impacted by a storm force.
- A modeled hazard – A storm force (or range of forces) that the stakeholder perceives as a risk to the asset, can be quantified such as inundation depth or wind velocity, and is modeled by a numerical storm simulation.
- The threshold(s) – The storm force threshold that when exceeded at the location of concern triggers a consequence according to the stakeholder or other data source. For example, winds above 100 mph or flooding one foot above ground elevation.
- The consequences – The outcomes if the storm force exceeds the threshold at the location of concern according to the stakeholder.
Impact
The approach captures critical facility managers’ expertise about impacts and consequences of damage. These are integrated into model outputs that can be viewed in the CHAMP dashboard. The concerns collected directly from end-users of the model make outputs directly relevant to emergency managers as they allocate resources and anticipate the challenges of an imminent storm at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
Consequence Thresholds include five components:
- The asset – An asset the stakeholder perceives can be directly impacted by a storm force (e.g., a generator, electrical transformer, computer server).
- The specific location of the asset – The latitude and longitude of the asset the stakeholder believes can be directly impacted by a storm force.
- A modeled hazard – A storm force (or range of forces) that the stakeholder perceives as a risk to the asset, can be quantified such as inundation depth or wind velocity, and is modeled by a numerical storm simulation.
- The threshold(s) – The storm force threshold that when exceeded at the location of concern triggers a consequence according to the stakeholder or other data source. For example, winds above 100 mph or flooding one foot above ground elevation.
- The consequences – The outcomes if the storm force exceeds the threshold at the location of concern according to the stakeholder.
The approach captures critical facility managers’ expertise about impacts and consequences of damage. These are integrated into model outputs that can be viewed in the CHAMP dashboard. The concerns collected directly from end-users of the model make outputs directly relevant to emergency managers as they allocate resources and anticipate the challenges of an imminent storm at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
