Work

Towards inclusive risk-informed infrastructure development in expanding cities

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Conventional natural-hazard risk-modeling approaches do not consider possible unintended negative socioeconomic consequences of designing infrastructure expansions in a risk-informed way. Here, we propose a people-centered decision-making framework for urban infrastructure development that addresses this issue. The framework integrates a bespoke agent-based model that accounts for implications of variations in infrastructure expansion on dynamic land values and related residential location decision making. This means that the model captures macro-scale socioeconomic effects resulting from infrastructure development that are not explicitly related to natural-hazard events. The underlying algorithm balances these considerations with the successful operation of the infrastructure itself and the potential infrastructure performance losses that accompany a natural-hazard event. We demonstrate the framework by optimizing the expansion of transportation in a virtual urban testbed that imitates a typical expanding urban context in the Global South. This work can be used to guide inclusive risk-sensitive infrastructure planning in hazardous, rapidly growing cities.

Source: Communications Engineering

DOI: 10.1038/s44172-025-00494-3

Authors: Fabrizio Nocera, Yahya Gamal, Chenbo Wang, Gemma Cremen

Institutions: University College London, King's College London, Urban Big Data Centre, University of Glasgow

Language: English

Topic: Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis

Subfield: Civil and Structural Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,190