Testbeds
We will demonstrate our findings on two testbeds to engage community members and stakeholders in guiding our research.
We will modify existing virtual communities, like the ones created by NIST’s Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning, to represent a coastal community in a seismic area with clusters of low-, mid-, and high-rise buildings using a fine resolution for building spatial distribution. We will first assess the objective risk from compounding coastal flooding-related saltwater deterioration and seismicity for the virtual testbed, then apply the refined proposed framework to a real testbed. Utilizing a virtual testbed will allow us to generalize the results and facilitate implementation at other sites.
Sample Virtual Testbed: Top and left, 600 buildings representing an urban downtown area; bottom right, a neighborhood within the testbed area including roadways and specific building types.
Hilo, Hawaii is a coastal settlement of 44,000 residents. Hilo’s economy is diversified across government employment, exports, aquaculture, agriculture, support for a nearby observatory, and limited tourism. Hilo is affected by both seismic and coastal inundation risk. Increased coastal inundation is expected due to sea level rise, as storm surges have been accelerating, endangering large hotels and apartment complexes on the waterfront. Newer residential development extends inland. The “median year structure built,” per census data, is 1979. Census data show Hilo to be a majority-minority population. Data also show a majority owner-occupied housing settlement (62%) and a rate of higher education degree obtainment (33.9%) just above the national average, but with higher unemployment and poverty rates (17%) than the national averages.
Real-World Testbed: Hilo, Hawaii