An approach for combining a systems engineering design model with a geospatial model for improved disaster management and impact modeling

Recent natural disasters have highlighted the vulnerability of critical lifeline infrastructure to disruption and failure. Contributing to this phenomenon is both an increased exposure to natural hazards due to developmental pressures in areas subject to earthquakes, flooding, and volcanism and an increased interdependence between the systems that comprise the infrastructure. Recent national policy guidance and research on critical lifeline infrastructure have highlighted the need for systems approaches and consideration of the complex behaviors of socio-technical component systems.; Geographic information systems (GIS) are commonly used to model natural hazards and their effects but are currently limited by their inability to manage and apply dynamic process information and behaviors associated with spatial features. Systems engineering offers rich models and methodologies that can systematically relate functional behaviors to requirements and physical architectures yet rarely considers the geospatial aspect.; This study demonstrates that it is possible to augment geospatial models with a systems engineering design model capable of supporting balanced functional and requirements perspectives. We show that linking objects in the geospace to functional models permits spatial features to manifest design context functional behaviors and brings spatial awareness to functional models. By abstracting functional interdependence into the functional model and making it sensitive to the impacts of natural hazards in the physical realm, the combined modeling approach appears to offer new insights to the study of the physical vulnerability of interdependent lifeline infrastructure to natural hazards and suggests the potential for spatially-aware systems engineering. The study presents examples of combined modeling products developed for various hazard cases, reviews modeling lessons learned, and recommends avenues for further research.