SCC-CIVIC-PG Track B: UNUM: Unification for Underground resilience Measures

Natural disasters are predicted to pose increasing threats to urban populations. Given community reliance on utility services and the interconnected and interoperable nature of utility services, infrastructure issues in one neighborhood may have direct and/or cascading effects in others (e.g. a transformer overload in one area may cripple services in distant neighborhoods).

Improving natural hazard resilience requires full knowledge of subsurface usage and community interests in them to identify threats and vulnerabilities as well to design effective mitigation strategies. To directly address this challenge the Unification for Underground Resilience Measures (UNUM) project proposes examining subsurface data development, integration and interoperability options in ways envisioned after the 9/11 New York City (NYC) World Trade Center attack.

Three-dimensional (3D) integration, viewing, and querying of subsurface data can enable improved risk identification, the implementation of cost-effective mitigation and redundancy measures, and enhanced communications with communities which currently have little access to infrastructure information. Such infrastructure information is typically held in proprietary systems, stored in separate silos, and likely to be in incompatible formats.

Overcoming current data integration barriers requires the design of seamless, interoperable, 3D data storage and visualization systems and a willingness to share data with appropriate security measures in place. UNUM will assemble all relevant stakeholders for the necessary data sharing agreements, security arrangements, and stakeholder concerns to enable a Stage 2 implementation for 2 NYC neighborhoods.

UNUM embraces the Model for Underground Data Definition and Interchange (MUDDI) [an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) led data modeling effort for standardizing underground utility information]. In Stage 1, individual and group meetings and information gathering will take place with 31 unique stakeholders including government agencies, local utility companies, community groups, and political leaders.

UNUM focuses on two NYC neighborhoods: Sunset Park, Brooklyn and the Grand Central Business Improvement District, Manhattan and is expected to generate data gathering, sharing, and application recommendations applicable across NYC and beyond. Stage 2 will implement Stage 1 recommendations through the MUDDI data model for the two neighborhoods. These community test beds will be used to refine an infrastructure data integration strategy that can be applied across multiple jurisdictions across the U.S. to help assess threats and vulnerabilities of vital infrastructure systems and to identify single points of failure and triggers to cascading effects.

The project will provide effective models for multi-stakeholder engagement and a detailed roadmap for the implementation of a subsurface data model.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.