Understanding the Hidden Impact of Disasters

Just-in-Time Supply Chain
Part of the challenge is that supply chains are evolving.

“All of those optimizations have potential far-reaching effects,” Hruska said. “You can disrupt a supply chain in one part of the U.S. that can affect people hundreds if not thousands of miles away. We’re trying to identify those critical supply chains: water, wastewater, electricity, fuels, telecommunications, even hospital supply chains, for blood products and medicines.”

For example, extreme cold weather in Texas might disrupt the delivery of natural gas, thereby cutting off gas supplies to electric generation plants in another state such as California. Or a tornado might cripple a plant that produces the chemicals necessary for a wastewater treatment facility to function.

AHA could help analyze not only public services, but also industrial supply chains, and the application is flexible enough to apply these scenarios to specific facilities.

For instance, a single natural gas refinery in the Mountain West has the capacity to produce nearly a quarter of the world’s helium supply in a given year. Aside from party balloons, helium is necessary for any number of industrial processes including everything from a coolant for MRI machines to arc welding. If that facility were damaged, it could hamper dozens of industries across the planet.

“Those are relationships where, unless you are at the facility or in that industry, the importance of a particular product or service goes unnoticed,” Hruska said.

Before Disaster Strikes
Emergency managers can use AHA to map and model the effects of natural and man-made incidents before a disaster strikes, enabling effective mitigation planning.

Or, in the wake of a disaster, managers can use these tools to respond more effectively. For example, AHA’s dependency model might help managers determine which essential services to recover first—say, restoring a power substation before a water treatment facility—because the treatment facility requires power to operate.

In short, AHA helps emergency crews respond to a loss of infrastructure faster and more efficiently. Power, water and other essential services are restored quickly so communities can return to normal.

AHA has been developed and tested on water, wastewater, communications and energy (electrical, oil and natural gas and petroleum), and critical manufacturing sectors. AHA was successfully used in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sponsored dependency pilot project and the AHA methodology was subsequently incorporated into a national-level DHS critical infrastructure portal.

“The ultimate goal is to use that information to help emergency managers across the emergency management framework prepare beforehand or respond quickly after a natural disaster,” Hruska said.