Local supply chains: The disaster management perspective

Situational awareness of the operational status of specific, critical supply and demand nodes following a major disaster may inform response and recovery activities based on the ability of an infrastructure asset or system to support core facility operations. Near-real-time analysis of infrastructure dependency information is a computationally intensive process that has generally been observed informally by public safety officials. While system-level information may be desired, it has been beyond the capabilities of most local public safety and emergency management agencies. To address this problem, a Grass-roots Infrastructure Dependency Model (GRID-M) was developed to enable near-real-time analysis of physical infrastructure dependencies of specific supply and demand nodes within four lifeline sectors: electricity, natural gas, water, and wastewater. The operational status of each node can be characterized as operational, partially operational, or not operational. These statuses are obtained by matching real-time outage or disruption data from utility providers with predetermined specific coping strategies based on a preincident limited infrastructure survey for specific assets within a network. This information can also be paired with a limited damage assessment to provide awareness of the accessibility to, and physical state of, each node within supply chains of interest. GRID-M displays all outputs within a Geographic Information Systems environment with additional prepopulated layers such as real-time traffic and demographic information of the affected communities. As such, GRID-M may be used following a major disaster to support the identification of priority response and recovery objectives based on the disruptions of critical local supply chains and their relationship with affected communities.