Tien, Johansen win Resilience Week top award for paper on vulnerabilities of interdependent infrastructure

Chloe Johansen, left, and Iris Tien hold their first-place paper award at the Resilience Week 2017 conference for their work analyzing the vulnerabilities of interdependent infrastructure. They used Atlanta's water and power systems as a case study. (Photo Courtesy: Iris Tien)
Chloe Johansen, left, and Iris Tien hold their first-place paper award at the Resilience Week 2017 conference for their work analyzing the vulnerabilities of interdependent infrastructure. They used Atlanta's water and power systems as a case study. (Photo Courtesy: Iris Tien)

Iris Tien and Ph.D. student Chloe Johansen won a top award at the Resilience Week 2017 conference for their paper on analyzing the vulnerabilities of interdependent infrastructure.

Using Atlanta’s water and power systems as a case study, Tien and Johansen presented their probabilistic approach to modeling interactions between infrastructure systems including how to identify critical components and weak spots. Their paper won the first-place award in the resilient critical infrastructure category at the conference in September.

“The paper is related to the work I am doing in modeling interdependent critical infrastructure systems. It specifically looks at the City of Atlanta systems where we are able to do some unique validation with real events,” said Tien, an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“The overall objective is to be able to conduct more comprehensive risk assessments considering interdependencies in order to inform infrastructure investments and increase resilience.”

Resilience Week gathered scholars for presentations and discussion about protecting critical infrastructure “from unexpected and malicious threats,” according to conference organizers.