To showcase some of the science behind IN-CORE, Dylan Sanderson, Kooshan Amini, and Milad Roohi presented their work from three testbed locations during the May 2024 IN-Core Semi-Annual Meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado. The testbeds are cities that researchers chose as example sites that helped to develop the IN-CORE platform and aid in building, validating, and verifying resilience models to confirm the science behind them. Dylan Sanderson, a NIST Postdoctoral Scholar, demonstrated how IN-CORE can be used to explore planning and policy decisions to aid in reducing potential damage to homes and loss of life through the Seaside, Oregon, testbed.

Using Galveston, Texas, as an example, Kooshan Amini, PhD student at Rice University, showed how IN-CORE is able to model the combined effects from a hurricane: flooding, wind, storm surge, and waves. Additionally, he showed the overlapping effects that could cause people to be forced from their homes, either from damage, power loss, impassible roadways, or a combination of these factors. His models highlight which roadways and bridges might become inaccessible due to damage and/or flooding.

As he looked at the long-term impacts and recovery, Kooshan illustrated how IN-CORE is able to show timelines for road repairs and power restoration to individual homes and buildings. Additionally, IN-CORE can help optimize a community’s recovery goals that align with their budgetary allowances. In another model Kooshan presented, a hurricane could result in $10 billion in damages if no mitigation strategies were implemented. However, if $50 million was invested to elevate buildings, that same event could greatly reduce the cost of damages by roughly $4 billion.

Milad Roohi, professor at the University of Nebraska, presented on models developed for the Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah, testbed and for the Center’s partnership with the SLC community. Located along the most active fault in Utah, SLC is prone to earthquakes. With 20% of SLC’s occupied buildings being constructed with unreinforced masonry (URM), or without reinforcing steel. These buildings are at significant risk of collapse during earthquakes and a major source of deaths and injuries. To mitigate these risks, SLC partnered with IN-CORE and the CoE. Through this partnership, the SLC community was able to use IN-CORE to explore different scenarios to determine the costs and benefits of different reinforcements that could be applied to URM buildings.

Data from the Seaside, Oregon; Galveston, Texas; and Salt Lake City, Utah, testbed communities are available through IN-CORE.