ARISE Kansas

Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructures Driven by Social Equity (ARISE)

In May 2022, the ARISE project launched to help Kansans rebound faster and suffer less from large-scale disasters. This five-year initiative leverages a $24 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR) and the Kansas Board of Regents (award abstract).

People and Partners: ARISE enables research collaborations among a team of more than 70 faculty, students and staff across 18 partner universities and colleges in Kansas. We also engage with Kansas residents in primarily in five counties: Ford, Finney, Seward, Johnson and Wyandotte, empowering residents to contribute to research that shapes the future of their neighborhoods and cities.

Vision: ARISE envisions a new social equity-driven paradigm for resilience analysis, transforming how communities invest in, and manage, human and physical infrastructure through a pipeline of leaders and decision-makers.

Purpose: This project aims to build research capacity in Kansas linked to community engagement and blended with education for statewide benefits.

Leadership: Professor Belinda Sturm (KU) oversees the project as its principal investigator with co-leads Bala Natarajan (KSU) and Elaina Sutley (KU) along with theme leads from Kansas State University, Wichita State University, and the University of Kansas.

NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1, #2148878 (2022-2027)

Team resources

Impacts

1,000

Students, teens, and families engaged in educational activities

Publications and scholarly work

$1.1 million

in seed grants awarded to 22 faculty to kickstart novel research

Research for Kansans, by Kansans

ARISE unites engineers, social scientists, students, faculty, policymakers, business leaders, and other voices statewide.

Location of higher education institutions (pins) and counties (orange circles) partnering with ARISE.

Rationale

Kansas currently ranks 9th in federal disaster declarations per capita and is becoming increasingly at risk of extreme weather, natural disasters, and cyberattacks. While it is impractical to safeguard infrastructure from all hazards, we can boost our resilience.

Water, energy, and transportation systems support societal well-being and economic prosperity. But natural hazards and cyberattacks are becoming increasing common, making resilience—the capacity of a system to absorb a disturbance, adapt, and recover rapidly when disruption does occur—an urgent pursuit for critical infrastructure.

We focus on social equity because socially vulnerable people generally live and work in the most physically vulnerable buildings and areas (e.g., floodplains). Federal agencies recognize that many disaster recovery efforts are systemically biased against houseless people, persons with disabilities or living in poverty, racial minorities, ethnic and indigenous populations, or renters. These communities often receive less aid and recover slower from weather disasters. Ultimately, supporting underserved communities and combatting the climate crises are critical for national security.

Research Themes

1: Socially Equitable Infrastructure

Theme 1 seeks to build a tool to enable the optimization of utilities’ strategies to enhance resilience against disasters. Incorporating interrelated infrastructures and community impacts will ensure the tool provides efficient and socially-equitable disaster responses. Co-leads: Jason Bergtold (KSU) & George Amariucai (KSU), with Joel Mendez (KU), Bala Natarajan (KSU), Elaina Sutley (KU), Xiaoheng Wang (WSU), and Rachel Krause (KU).

2: Scalable, Holistic Resilience

Theme 2 is identifying interventions to enhance both equity and resilience. The goal is to holistically and probabilistically evaluate the influence that existing infrastructure assets and public policies have on the pre-disaster context and post-disaster experiences of Kansas residents. Co-leads: Rachel Krause (KU) and Bala Natarajan (KSU) with Elaina Sutley (KU), Xiaoheng Wang (WSU), Jude Kastens (KU), George Amariucai (KSU), Visvakumar Aravinthan (WSU), HM Abdul Aziz (KSU), Jason Bergtold (KSU), and Justin Hutchison (KU).

3: Case Studies

Theme 3 uses case studies to understand real threats in Kansas communities, spanning transportation, energy, drinking water, and wastewater systems. These findings will lead to building a co-simulation platform for understanding how hazards relate to infrastructure systems in various scenarios. Co-leads Xiaoheng Wang (WSU), and Visvakumar Aravinthan (WSU) with HM Abdul Aziz (KSU), Justin Hutchison (KU), Jude Kastens (KU), Anil Pahwa (KSU), Edward Peltier (KU), Vaishali Sharda (KSU), Belinda Sturm (KU), and Bala Natarajan (KSU).

4: Decision Support Tools

Theme 4 researchers use behavioral economics to design decision-support tools for community leaders, policy makers and others. Data from experiments, surveys, workshops, and other tasks inform the research. Co-led by Elaina Sutley (KU and Jason Bergtold (KSU) with George Amariucai (KSU), Jason Bergtold (KSU), Xiaoheng Wang (WSU), Rachel Krause (KU), and Jomella Watson-Thompson (KU).

Research Highlights

Community Resilience Analysis

A team of engineers conducted a state-of-the-art review of virtual testbeds for community resilience analysis. By looking closely at 22 existing testbeds and 103 associated publications, they uncovered i) what factors are needed for making virtual testbeds, ii) what tools are available for making virtual testbeds, iii) what challenges testbed-developers encounter, and iii) what areas of research are ripe for future study.

Research publication

Flood Maps

ARISE researchers are gathering data about past disasters in Kansas, including costly flooding events. This work is helping the team build real-time maps and dashboards for emergency planning and responses.

Kansas Reconnaissance Data

Smart Grid

The ARISE team has a novel approach to analyzing power grid resilience. Rather than only focusing on the physical infrastructure like conventional tools, this new approach is a virtual testbed that integrates both infrastructure and social aspects of the community in the simulation.