Use of artificial intelligence to improve resilience and preparedness against adverse flood events

The main focus of this paper is the novel use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in natural disaster, more specifically flooding, to improve flood resilience and preparedness. Different types of flood have varying consequences and are followed by a specific pattern. For example, a flash flood can be a result of snow or ice melt and can occur in specific geographic places and certain season. The motivation behind this research has been raised from the Building Resilience into Risk Management (BRIM) project, looking at resilience in water systems. This research uses the application of the state-of-the-art techniques i.e., AI, more specifically Machin Learning (ML) approaches on big data, collected from previous flood events to learn from the past to extract patterns and information and understand flood behaviours in order to improve resilience, prevent damage, and save lives. In this paper, various ML models have been developed and evaluated for classifying floods, i.e., flash flood, lakeshore flood, etc. using current information i.e., weather forecast in different locations. The analytical results show that the Random Forest technique provides the highest accuracy of classification, followed by J48 decision tree and Lazy methods. The classification results can lead to better decision-making on what measures can be taken for prevention and preparedness and thus improve flood resilience

Towards integrated flood risk and resilience management

Flood resilience is an emerging concept for tackling extreme weathers and minimizing the associated adverse impacts. There is a significant knowledge gap in the study of resilience concepts, assessment frameworks and measures, and management strategies. This editorial introduces the latest advances in flood risk and resilience management, which are published in 11 papers in the Special Issue. A synthesis of these papers is provided in the following themes: hazard and risk analysis, flood behaviour analysis, assessment frameworks and metrics, and intervention strategies. The contributions are discussed in the broader context of the field of flood risk and resilience management and future research directions are identified for sustainable flood management.<br

Reliable, Resilient and Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems: An Analysis of Robustness under Deep Uncertainty

Reliability, resilience and sustainability are key goals of any urban drainage system. However, only a few studies have recently focused on measuring, operationalizing and comparing such concepts in a world of deep uncertainty. In this study, these key concepts are defined and quantified for a number of gray, green and hybrid strategies, aimed at improving the capacity issues of an existing integrated urban wastewater system. These interventions are investigated by means of a regret-based approach, which evaluates the robustness (that is the ability to perform well under deep uncertainty conditions) of each strategy in terms of the three qualities through integration of multiple objectives (i.e., sewer flooding, river water quality, combined sewer overflows, river flooding, greenhouse gas emissions, cost and acceptability) across four different future scenarios. The results indicate that strategies found to be robust in terms of sustainability were typically also robust for resilience and reliability across future scenarios. However, strategies found to be robust in terms of their resilience and, in particular, for reliability did not guarantee robustness for sustainability. Conventional gray infrastructure strategies were found to lack robustness in terms of sustainability due to their unbalanced economic, environmental and social performance. Such limitations were overcome, however, by implementing hybrid solutions that combine green retrofits and gray rehabilitation solutions

Supplementary Information Files for "Use of Artificial Intelligence to Improve Resilience and Preparedness Against Adverse Flood Events"

Supplementary Information Files for "Use of Artificial Intelligence to Improve Resilience and Preparedness Against Adverse Flood Events"Abstract:The main focus of this paper is the novel use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in natural disaster, more specifically flooding, to improve flood resilience and preparedness. Different types of flood have varying consequences and are followed by a specific pattern. For example, a flash flood can be a result of snow or ice melt and can occur in specific geographic places and certain season. The motivation behind this research has been raised from the Building Resilience into Risk Management (BRIM) project, looking at resilience in water systems. This research uses the application of the state-of-the-art techniques i.e., AI, more specifically Machin Learning (ML) approaches on big data, collected from previous flood events to learn from the past to extract patterns and information and understand flood behaviours in order to improve resilience, prevent damage, and save lives. In this paper, various ML models have been developed and evaluated for classifying floods, i.e., flash flood, lakeshore flood, etc. using current information i.e., weather forecast in different locations. The analytical results show that the Random Forest technique provides the highest accuracy of classification, followed by J48 decision tree and Lazy methods. The classification results can lead to better decision-making on what measures can be taken for prevention and preparedness and thus improve flood resilience</div

Supplementary Information for "A Model-Based Engineering Methodology and Architecture for Resilience in Systems-of-Systems: A Case of Water Supply Resilience to Flooding."

Supplementary Information for "A Model-Based Engineering Methodology and Architecture for Resilience in Systems-of-Systems: A Case of Water Supply Resilience to Flooding."Abstract:There is a clear and evident requirement for a conscious effort to be made towards a resilient water system-of-systems (SoS) within the UK, in terms of both supply and flooding. The impact of flooding goes beyond the immediately obvious socio-aspects of disruption, cascading and affecting a wide range of connected systems. The issues caused by flooding need to be treated in a fashion which adopts an SoS approach to evaluate the risks associated with interconnected systems and to assess resilience against flooding from various perspectives. Changes in climate result in deviations in frequency and intensity of precipitation; variations in annual patterns make planning and management for resilience more challenging. This article presents a verified model-based system engineering methodology for decision-makers in the water sector to holistically, and systematically implement resilience within the water context, specifically focusing on effects of flooding on water supply. A novel resilience viewpoint has been created which is solely focused on the resilience aspects of architecture that is presented within this paper. Systems architecture modelling forms the basis of the methodology and includes an innovative resilience viewpoint to help evaluate current SoS resilience, and to design for future resilient states. Architecting for resilience, and subsequently simulating designs, is seen as the solution to successfully ensuring system performance does not suffer, and systems continue to function at the desired levels of operability. The case study presented within this paper demonstrates the application of the SoS resilience methodology on water supply networks in times of flooding, highlighting how such a methodology can be used for approaching resilience in the water sector from an SoS perspective. The methodology highlights where resilience improvements are necessary and also provides a process where architecture solutions can be proposed and tested.</div