Infrastructure protectionDecade after 9/11, infrastructure interdependence a major problem for U.S.
After years of study of the impact on infrastructure of the 9/11 attacks, a groups of experts paints a disconcerting picture of major infrastructure systems that were highly dependent upon one another; even today, these experts see this deep interdependency as a liability and threat to national security and the quality of life for its citizens
Al Wallace was watching the live television news coverage from Manhattan when his phone rang. Only a few hours after the attacks on 11 September 2001, a program manager from the National Science Foundation (NSF) called to ask for Wallace’s help in assuring nothing like this could ever happen again.
Wallace, an expert in decision sciences and systems engineering, and a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, readily accepted. Within two weeks, he and his team were at Ground Zero. The rubble was still smoldering. Wallace collected as much information as possible without disrupting relief efforts. His researchers scouted the area, took photos, copied maps, and spoke to whatever officials could spare a few minutes for an interview. A day or so later, Wallace and the group were told to leave.
A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute release reports that the researchers then turned to the media as a source of data. Every morning, they scoured newspapers for articles about infrastructure restoration and disruption. A systems engineer who studies the deep interconnectedness of seemingly independent events or entities, Wallace was looking for the story behind the newspaper stories. A few months later the research team returned to Ground Zero, fostering a partnership with emergency response officials as well as Rensselaer graduates who worked at major power utilities and telecommunications companies. After years of study, what emerged was a disconcerting picture of major infrastructure systems that were highly dependent upon one another. Even today, Wallace sees this deep interdependency as a liability and threat to national security and the quality of life for its citizens.
“Our infrastructure is aging, and all of the different systems — such as power, water, communications, transportation, and hospitals — are managed independently. Our group looks at this situation from a 30,000-foot perspective,” said Wallace, the Yamada Corporation Professor at Rensselaer, and a member of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “We map out and try to better understand the interdependencies amongst these infrastructure systems. The more we know about how they depend on each other, the better we’ll be at planning for disaster situations when one or more are disrupted or unavailable.”
The classic example of interdependent infrastructure systems is a power plant that runs on coal, where the coal is shipped to the plant via trains that require power from the plant in order to operate. While this chicken-and-egg situation is less subtle than most of the interdependencies that
