Human Behavior and the Predictability of Infrastructure Services Usage and Its Environmental Impacts
Abstract
Context/Purpose. Interactions between infrastructure services and the environment that are destructive to users of those services and the environment, is a wicked problem. Models that estimate such interactions often do not account for the unpredictability and variability of human behavior with respect to infrastructure services. Extreme weather can adversely change the networked structure of these interactions. This presentation addresses how human behavior shapes interactions between Infrastructure services and the environment particularly under extreme weather. The importance of infrastructure is its pervasiveness in social systems and its centrality in sustainability science.
Approach and Method. Human behavior influence is evaluated for energy, transportation and water usage directly and indirectly. The focus is on service usage and routing choice behaviors. Two major platforms are used. One is human food system choices, e.g., food types, state (fresh/ frozen), packaging, style, healthfulness, purchase location, distribution, and how these choices can influence and be influenced by connectivity among energy, transportation and water infrastructure that support urban food services. The second platform is transportation route choices which influence and are influenced by trip need, cost, availability, convenience, congestion, and perceptions of safety and congestion. For both platforms, the influence of extreme weather scenarios on consumption and routing is assessed. The outputs for both platforms are as conceptual flow diagrams or maps for alternative human-infrastructure interactions in the form of networks for individuals with different roles (e.g., consumers, service operators) using databases from an extensive literature and cases. Results and Conclusions. Preliminary mapping of these infrastructure, environment and social interrelationships indicate that small changes in linkages and network structure can result in very large changes in infrastructure services and their environmental effects. Extreme weather particularly redirects the nature of the linkages at least temporarily. These conceptual models increase the predictability and path definition of human use and impact of infrastructure services especially for extreme weather effects on services.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC31G1325Z
- Keywords:
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- 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings);
- GENERAL OR MISCELLANEOUSDE: 0230 Impacts of climate change: human health;
- GEOHEALTHDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4333 Disaster risk analysis and assessment;
- NATURAL HAZARDS