Promoting societal well-being by designing sustainable and resilient infrastructure: Engineering tools and broader interdisciplinary considerations

Modern societies rely on large-scale interdependent infrastructure, including transportation, water and wastewater, electric power, communication and information networks, that are critical for economic growth and societal well-being. Such infrastructure is vulnerable to natural hazards, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires; as well as anthropogenic hazards from industrial accidents, diseases and malevolence. Past disasters have shown that the societal consequences of the damage and failure of infrastructure often significantly exceed the physical damage to such systems, are typically not limited to the immediate aftermath of a damaging event but can be long term, and are unequal among individuals. Inequalities in the impact might be spatial (between and within communities) and temporal (across different generations). Aging and deterioration of physical systems, population growth, economic development in regions particularly vulnerable to natural hazards such as coastal regions, and climate change can exacerbate risks. This paper presents some of the engineering tools for the modeling of the impacts on infrastructure components, systems and communities and the modeling of their recoveries. The paper also introduces sustainability and resilience as two of the most important elements in risk evaluation and the development infrastructure able to address societal needs.