18 Bridging the Vulnerability Paradigm to Critical Infrastructure …
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18.2 Understanding the Fragility of Interconnectivity
Under Climate Change Threats: Examples of Impacts
on the Transportation Energy System
18.2.1 Hurricane Sandy’s Escalating Failures Between
Power, Fuel and Transportation and Policy Context
A few words on Sendai + IRDR…CI… Only in the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that the issue of CI interdependencies
and cascading failures is contextualized within international climate change policy
and planning (Revi et al. 2014; Field et al. 2014). CI cascading failure was addressed
as a “novel” systemic issue where authors warn about the emergent risk rooted in
our dependence on coupled systems, specifically on the regional reports for North
America (Romero-Lankao and Smith 2014), Europe (Kovats and Valentini 2014), and
Australasia (Reisinger and Kitching 2014). At the national level, the challenges of CI
systemic risk and cascading failures due to weather hazards have been addressed as a
response to major disasters such as the 1994 San Jacinto River flooding that escalated
to technological disaster after oil and gas spills from damaged pipelines in Texas;
as the 1998 ice storm impact on electricity facilities in the Canadian East Coast
(Chang et al. 2007); as the winter storms that devastated telecommunication and
disrupted roads in northern France and Germany in 1999 (Krausmann et al. 2017);
and as Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of aging infrastructure and degraded lifelines
in vulnerable neighborhoods of New Orleans in 2005 (Steinberg 2006; Lazari 2014);
as well as Hurricane Katrina and Rita’s impact to oil and gas facilities of the Gulf
Coast ( Cruz and Krausmann 2008), etc. Some of the recent weather-related disasters
that present political landmarks to the current issue of CI interdependence are the
2012 Hurricane Sandy and the 2017–2018 extreme-wet-and-dry disaster season.
CI are components of larger interconnected systems, and a disruption in one infrastructure creates ripple effects into other infrastructures which increase the dimensions of impacts of disasters to society (Hasan and Foliente 2015). Hurricane Sandy
brought visibility to the issues of CI cascading failures in U.S. national policies,
being cited in the latest National Infrastructure Protection Plan (DHS 2013), in the
Energy Sector-Specific Plan (DHS 2015) as well as in a California’s Emergency
Fuels Set-A-Side Exercise (CalOES 2016). The disaster is considered as “textbook
case study” to better mitigate potential impacts from cross-sector interdependencies,
specifically between the fuel and the electricity sectors.
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in the U.S. East Coast,
causing power outage to 8.7 million people. By October 30 it affected 21 states
from North Carolina to Maine, going as far inland as Illinois. The transmission and
distribution components of the electrical grid were affected by winds and storm
surge flooding. Flooding and debris disturbed recovery due to difficulty of access of
public workers to reestablish service, and because of saltwater damage that forced
substation equipment replacements (Comes and Van de Walle 2014). The flooding
333
18.2 Understanding the Fragility of Interconnectivity
Under Climate Change Threats: Examples of Impacts
on the Transportation Energy System
18.2.1 Hurricane Sandy’s Escalating Failures Between
Power, Fuel and Transportation and Policy Context
A few words on Sendai + IRDR…CI… Only in the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that the issue of CI interdependencies
and cascading failures is contextualized within international climate change policy
and planning (Revi et al. 2014; Field et al. 2014). CI cascading failure was addressed
as a “novel” systemic issue where authors warn about the emergent risk rooted in
our dependence on coupled systems, specifically on the regional reports for North
America (Romero-Lankao and Smith 2014), Europe (Kovats and Valentini 2014), and
Australasia (Reisinger and Kitching 2014). At the national level, the challenges of CI
systemic risk and cascading failures due to weather hazards have been addressed as a
response to major disasters such as the 1994 San Jacinto River flooding that escalated
to technological disaster after oil and gas spills from damaged pipelines in Texas;
as the 1998 ice storm impact on electricity facilities in the Canadian East Coast
(Chang et al. 2007); as the winter storms that devastated telecommunication and
disrupted roads in northern France and Germany in 1999 (Krausmann et al. 2017);
and as Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of aging infrastructure and degraded lifelines
in vulnerable neighborhoods of New Orleans in 2005 (Steinberg 2006; Lazari 2014);
as well as Hurricane Katrina and Rita’s impact to oil and gas facilities of the Gulf
Coast ( Cruz and Krausmann 2008), etc. Some of the recent weather-related disasters
that present political landmarks to the current issue of CI interdependence are the
2012 Hurricane Sandy and the 2017–2018 extreme-wet-and-dry disaster season.
CI are components of larger interconnected systems, and a disruption in one infrastructure creates ripple effects into other infrastructures which increase the dimensions of impacts of disasters to society (Hasan and Foliente 2015). Hurricane Sandy
brought visibility to the issues of CI cascading failures in U.S. national policies,
being cited in the latest National Infrastructure Protection Plan (DHS 2013), in the
Energy Sector-Specific Plan (DHS 2015) as well as in a California’s Emergency
Fuels Set-A-Side Exercise (CalOES 2016). The disaster is considered as “textbook
case study” to better mitigate potential impacts from cross-sector interdependencies,
specifically between the fuel and the electricity sectors.
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in the U.S. East Coast,
causing power outage to 8.7 million people. By October 30 it affected 21 states
from North Carolina to Maine, going as far inland as Illinois. The transmission and
distribution components of the electrical grid were affected by winds and storm
surge flooding. Flooding and debris disturbed recovery due to difficulty of access of
public workers to reestablish service, and because of saltwater damage that forced
substation equipment replacements (Comes and Van de Walle 2014). The flooding