Abstract

In this age of technology, it is evident that for our technologically advancing society to function
efficiently, it relies heavily on an array of complex infrastructure networks.
These networks include power utilities, water supply, health care, information technology and
transportation which constitute the resources required for society to function properly.
With the interdependencies of these critical infrastructures becoming more complex, the system
becomes more fragile, thus increasing the probability of failure, especially in a disaster situation.
As such, it is important to understand the behaviour of theses interdependent networks in order to
analyze and evaluate the coordination among infrastructures during an emergency.
A team at the University of British Colombia (UBC) has developed a simulator; Infrastructure
Interdependency Simulator (I2Sim), which can be used to implement models to assist in understanding
the interdependencies between these critical infrastructures and help develop corrective action that can
be taken to mitigate the effects of a disaster.
The research presented here will introduce conceptual improvements to the already flexible simulator.
An improved Virtual Decision Layer to help allocate resources to infrastructures based on its operating
state, introduction to Cell Storage where excess resources may be stored if so desired, development of
the Disaster Card Implementation to represent the levels and types of disasters experienced, and a
Graphical User Interface (GUI) for cells which allow the user to load the respective Human Readable
Tables (HRTs) into the simulator.
The project incorporates all of these concepts in the development of the MATLAB/SIMULINK model
that is developed to simulate the actual interconnections of the societys critical infrastructures.

Natural Disasters have always been a topic of keen interest in the past, but since their frequency of
occurrence has increased considerably, emphasis on disaster preparedness and disaster planning have
stricken greater interest around the world.
Mans drive for a better standard of living has come at a cost. The overall ill health of the earth created by
man, has contributed to the phenomena known as global warming.
Global Warming increases the frequency of earthquake occurrences, polar ice caps melting leading to rising
ocean levels (flooding), increased probability and intensity of droughts and heat waves, and warmer waters
resulting in hurricanes, to name a few.
In todays society with the high level of modernization with water utilities, communication, banking,
transportation networks and hospitals have many complex interaction points and depend critically on each
other to function properly. The occurrence of a natural disaster would have a negative impact on the
function of these critical infrastructures in addition to thousands of severe causalities. These disasters have
made the protection and restoration of critical infrastructures a serious national concern.
Caribbean countries experience disasters every year. M easuring the comparative vulnerability of countries to
natural disasters can serve to draw attention to the issue, identify sectors of the economy or society that are
particularly at risk, and assist in planning to mitigate the effects of future events. In addition, a wider
international comparison may serve to highlight the particular vulnerability to natural disasters of small island
states such as those of the Caribbean.
This thesis aims to develop conceptual improvements to a disaster simulation tool developed by the
University of British Colombia (UBC), which is implemented in Matlab/Simulink to train disaster
personnel and perform vulnerability analysis on existing infrastructure.
The Disaster Simulation Tool called the Infrastructure Interdependency Simulator (I2Sim) is built based on
the interdependent infrastructures that exist in society and will have the sole responsibility of providing the
operators/decision makers with critical information to the optimal allocation of resources to the various
infrastructures to ensure their sustainability during and after a disaster.

Chapter 1

Introduction
The topic of this thesis is the development of conceptual improvements to components of the simulator
created to study the interdependencies between infrastructure and critical buildings, as well as the
effective decision making process in resource allocation before, during or after disasters. Work in this
thesis is directly associated with works done on Infrastructure Interdependencies Simulation (I2Sim) at
the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Motivation
The current simulator ontology, cannot decide on the amount of resources to send to an infrastructure in
the event of a disaster, in addition, it will continuously supply the infrastructure with a constant amount
of resources (medicine, water, electricity, telecommunications, and transport in some cases) regardless
of the cells state.
As such an improved decision layer, depending on the severity of the damage sustained by the
infrastructure has to be conceptualised; this is represented by a disaster situation (disaster card .i.e.
earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, storm, flooding). Information will be transmitted to and from the
consumer (the production cell or the consumer which will be the hospital or disaster centre) of the
resources, and to the suppliers to avoid over allocating or under allocating resources to a production
cell or to a consumer cell.
The channel state by which the information and the resources are transmitted to the consumer of the
previous model was not considered. The route of transmitting resources and the state of the routes will
be evaluated (i.e. via truck/car, boat, and aircraft or through pipelines).
I2Sim can provide the user with the ability to simulate a disaster response at the system level with the
impact of events clearly shown, including the decisions made in response to the disaster coordination.
However some improvements can be made to it, and is addressed in the following chapters of this
document.
Research Objectives
The purpose of our research is to improve the I2Sim simulator by developing a conceptual Virtual
Decision Layer (VDL) to deal with infrastructure interdependencies in the event of a disaster to
effectively and efficiently allocate resources to these infrastructures (example a hospital or disaster
shelter).

Chapter 2

Infrastructure Interdependency Simulator (I2Sim)

It can be said that almost any system, organisation or infrastructure we deal with is interconnected with
some other system, organisation or infrastructure for efficient operation. The behaviour of these
systems are non-linear and complex in nature, which means, communication and information handling
provides a challenge, especially in disaster situations; that is till now.
Infrastructure Interdependency Simulator (I2Sim) was developed to deal with decision making not only
in disaster situations but where the communication between infrastructures sees it necessary to allocate
resources due to the state of the infrastructure or system as it were.
The simulator allows for management of critical infrastructures, namely hospitals, utilities (water,
electricity and communication systems) and emergency operating centres (EOC) which are classified as
cells; road ways, air ways and pipelines (any medium used to transport a resource) which are classified
as channels; and the resources being transported (water, medicine or food) are classified as tokens in
I2Sim.
The result of the development of the simulator is an emergency response plan created by the managers
of the critical infrastructures based on the information now given to them from the simulation, that is
complete and well thought out to account for events that may affect availability of resources upon
which the critical infrastructure rely for efficient operation, and where multiple levels of
interdependencies can be hidden.
Further, I2Sim has been developed to be able to take into account the interdependencies through a
system wide analysis, instead of relying on plans made by individual infrastructures that are essentially
isolated from each other.
Therefore, it can be used to model a disaster response setting illustrating the effects of events as they
occur, giving the managers of critical infrastructures the ability to respond to changes in response to
some unexpected event.
I2Sim Ontology
The cell channel model is the basis upon which the I2SIM Simulator was developed. The cell channel
system is based on the idea of token delivery to different infrastructures within the system and attempts
to understand the non linear relationships between inputs and outputs of different infrastructures. The
components of the cell channel model include cells, channels and tokens.
All infrastructures do not have the same description to model their operation; however, we can define a
common ontology to describe the function in different infrastructures.
1. Cell: Cells are virtual entities used to represent different infrastructures, where, it accepts an
input to produce a desired output. Consider a Farm that produces chickens for example, if a
farm that usually produces out of three (3) chicken coops, looses use of one (1) of the coops
due to renovation or lack of resources available to the farm for production, then the usual
amount of output will be reduced, therefore the farmer needs to decide on the amount of
feed, medicine, litter and chickens, etc is needed to function with this cell or infrastructure is
unavailable. The information to be used by the cells indicating the available output based on

the input received and the state of the cell will be in the form of tables, referred to as Human
Readable Tables (HRTs).
2. Channel: Channels are the virtual representations of the connections between the different
infrastructures and is the means by which tokens (feed, water, electricity, etc) are
transported from the supplier cells to the consumer cells. Channel states are characterised by
a time delay, that is, a transportation time delay. As with the cells, the channels description
is represented in the form of a table, an HRT to be exact.
3. Token: Tokens are the inputs and outputs of the cells, i.e. goods and services that are
transmitted between the cells or infrastructures.
Philosophy of Operation
With the advent of the simulator, work is continuously being done by universities around the world to
increase its already prominent flexibility.
The simulator works on the principle of Maximum Capacity Input/Output or Resource Availability
Model. That is, the production cell accepts what tokens is available to it from the supplier cell to
produce the maximum amount of tokens it can; based on the amount of resources available to it.
What is propagated through the system is the availability of resources. The actual production of the
cells are not modeled, so as long as a cell has enough resources available to it, it will produce how
much tokens is required of it.
Simulator Library Description
The simulator toolbox comprises the following basic building blocks:
Visualization and Control Components of the Simulator

I2Sim Control Panel

I2Sim Visualization Tool and Probes
Human Readable Tables (HRT)
Human Readable Tables (HRT) Tool

Basic Components of the simulator may be implemented in several ways and include:

Production Cells
Storage Cells
Channels
Aggregator Cells
Distributor Cells
Source Cells
Sink Cells
Modifier Cells
ICT Provider and Antenna

Control Panel
The I2Sim Control Panel is used to define the time unit of the simulation and provides a means to start,
stop and pause the simulation [1, 3].
Visualization Panel and Probes
I2Sim has a Probe block that allows the user to connect to any block output, or a line connecting two
blocks, to monitor its value over time [1, 3, 4].
This data of value and time can be plotted along with other probe information in the same window to
allow ease of comparison of output information from the cells. Plotting the probe data is handled by the
Visualisation Panel, which also allows the user to adjust the layout of the plot [1].

Human Readable Table (HRT)

The Human Readable Table (HRT) is a fundamental component of the cell. Its purpose is to provide a
way to determine how the output of a cell is affected by the level of availability of a number of inputs
as well [1, 2].
The purpose of the HRT is to provide an intuitive way to determine how the output of a cell is affected
by the level of availability of a number of inputs as well as factors intrinsic to the cell itself (e.g.
structural damage, emergency closure, etc.). The format of the tables may vary from cell to cell, but can
be considered variations of a common theme [1, 3, 4]. An example of the basic format of an HRT is as
follows:
row

r1

r2

r3

120

0.9

0.5

80

0.8

0.05

0.4

70

0.5

0.1

0.2

30

0.05

0.2

0.1

0
Table 2222

0.35

HRT Tool
The HRT Tool is a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows the user to load or create an HRT, and
can be opened from any block that uses an HRT [1].
Production Cell
The I2Sim Production Cell produces tokens based on the amount of resources (input tokens) supplied
to it. This relationship is dependent on the HRT. Consider, for example, a bakery who produces fresh
bread for a community. The bakery needs water, flour and electricity to produce the bread [1, 4].

X1
X2

X3

Figure 0000. Cell Block

The input resources (input tokens) come in on inputs x1, x2 and x3 respectively, and the output is fresh
bread through y. The amount of bread that can be produced depends on the amount of water, flour and
electricity available; this relationship would be defined in the HRT structure [1, 2, 3].
Storage Cell
Storage Cells are blocks that accept tokens and then release them at a user defined rate [1].
Channel
The I2Sim Channel block is a transportation element used to transport tokens from one block to another
[2, 3].
Aggregator Cell
To combine multiple inputs onto a single output the aggregator block can be used. The aggregator adds
the inputs every time step to from a resultant output [1, 4, 5].

Figure 2222. Aggregator Block.

Distributor Block
To convert a single input to multiple outputs, the user can employ the distributor block. The distribution
is done by a user defined ratio [1, 4, 5].
Some additional uses of the distributor block include:

to separate the tokens

as a control point on the output of a production cell to multiple locations
as a control point on the output of a storage unit to multiple locations

Figure 4444. Distributor Block.

Source Block
To generate a signal that can be used as an input to a block, the source block can be used. This block
can be used to:

an input signal to a block

a source of tokens into another block

trig

out

Figure 4444. Source Block.

Sink Block
The I2Sim Sink Block is used to dispose of tokens no longer required, example of this is, baked bread,
once it is produced by the bakery it cannot be used by the bakery so sent to sinks connected to the
output [2, 5].
Modifier Block
The modifier block is used to apply weighted factors to an input and relate the result to a known curve
to produce an output. This block was specifically created to perform complex functions for Egress and
Traffic models [1, 3, 5].

Availability Model
Consider the following diagram, it can be seen that the actual production of tokens is not the actual
usage of the consumer cells. However the maximum amount of tokens can be produced if so required.
The actual productions are not used in the simulator and the decision on how to allocate resources to
the consumer is based only on how much is the total amount produced.

30

Actual Usage
10

Actual Production

40

Actual Usage
20

30

Actual Usage
20

Figure 3333
Fixed Resource Allocation Scheme
The allocation of output tokens does not directly depend on the physical mode of operation of the
production cells or consumer cells. This method is very uneconomical; in fact, the decision maker
could determine, based on the information fed back from the cells on their state so that the extra tokens
can be sent to a cell that is running at full capacity or, where due to some changes in information
communicated can acquire more resources as needed.

Chapter 7

Case Study 1 The Farm

The study shows the development of an I2Sim model from a Physical System. The system referred to
here is a poultry farm whos major output is healthy chickens. Before the farm could be transformed to
a simulink diagram using the software, the farm needs to be properly analysed to identify key
infrastructure characteristics, namely:
1. Identification of Tokens; for efficient operation of the system.
2. Identification of Cells, which are the critical infrastructure of the system.
3. Identification of Channels, which are pathways for access of tokens.
This farm is located at Wallerfield in the small town of Arima, in Trinidad, and occupies a plot
measuring approximately one (1) acre; it comprises three (3) chicken coops, two (2) of which measure
fifty feet (50) in width and one hundred feet (100) in length and the last of the three coops is fifty feet
(50) wide and seventy feet (70) in length.
The layout of the farm is illustrated in figure 999 which shows a plan view of the farm, where all
access routes, pens, pathways, storage facilities and pathways utilized for flow of resources and or
storage is clearly visible.

Figure 999
Identification of Tokens

The tokens of the farm will constitute those resources required for a maximum output of product, in
this case healthy chickens. The farm comprises three chicken coops fed by water, electricity, feed,
medicine, litter, workers and chickens as illustrated in figure 9999.
These resources can be determined from a physical inspection of the facility or from interviews with
the operator or manager of the facility. With this information out on the table, identifying the channels
for the tokens is clearer.

Figure 9999
From figure 5555 the tokens in this system include:
Water
Electricity
Litter
Medicine
Feed
Chickens
Workers
Identification of Channels

Channels represent the means by which tokens (electricity, water, etc.) are transported from a source
cell to a consumption cell. This is where the interdependencies of the infrastructure will be evident.
With careful analysis of the system the user should notice the complexity of the interconnection of the
system, the different channels through which the tokens flow between infrastructures and the variety of
ways in which the infrastructures handle the tokens (i.e. the transition the tokens under go before and
after use by the different infrastructure).

Figure 3333
Figure 3333 illustrates the channels used by the tokens to reach their respective destination as
individual pathways, however, there is no specific pathway associated with the tokens in this particular
case and may vary depending on the type of system analysed. Therefore, in reducing the system from
the infrastructure interconnection diagram to the simulink diagram, one channel can be used to
represent the previous multiple channel representation for the same token. The channels as seen from
figure 3333:
Pipelines (Water and Medicated Water)
Electrical Wires (Electricity)
Truck (Litter, Feed, Medicine, Chickens)
Auger (Feed from silo to feeding system)
For example, as shown in figure 5555, there are multiple routes and entry points for the workers to get
to the coops but this can be modelled as a single channel. Also only one type of token is allowed per
channel, that is, only water through the water channel and workers can only go through the worker
channel.

ROUTE 2