Interdependent Infrastructure System Risk and Resilience to Natural Hazards

Complex, interdependent systems are necessary to the delivery of goods and services critical to societal function. Here we demonstrate how interdependent systems respond to disruptions. Specifically, we change the spatial arrangement of a disruption in infrastructure and show that -- while controlling for the size -- changes in the spatial pattern of a disruption induce significant changes in the way interdependent systems fail and recover. This work demonstrates the potential to improve characterizations of hazard disruption to infrastructure by incorporating additional information about the impact of disruptions on interdependent systems.

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