A catastrophic earthquake could disrupt marine transportation across coastal British Columbia, severely affecting supply chains to coastal communities and emergency response capabilities. This project seeks to better understand such risks and develop effective resilience strategies for different types of coastal communities. It inquires into how disaster events would likely affect ports, marine transportation routes, and the associated movement of people and resources in the emergency response phase, and what strategies would be effective to alleviate potential consequences.
Co-principal investigators on this project are David Bristow at the University of Victoria (infrastructure systems modeling), Ron Pelot and Floris Goerlandt at Dalhousie University (shipping risk), C. Lin and L. Zhou at the University of Victoria (port geotech and structural modeling), and Anne Goodchild at the University of Washington (shipping logistics).
This project aims to improve understanding of how coastal marine transportation systems would be disrupted in natural hazard events, how such disruption would impact coastal communities, and what strategies could effectively address this risk. Focusing on the movement of people and goods in the emergency response phase of a disaster, the study develops new tools, information, and risk assessments to support preparedness planning by local and provincial governments and the transportation sector. The research delivers: (1) workshops for engaging government and transport sector stakeholders; (2) a framework for assessing coastal community resilience to shipping disruption; (3) a simulation tool based on this framework; and (4) specific findings and recommendations for two case studies – a detailed analysis of catastrophic earthquake risk in British Columbia and exploratory analysis of hurricane risk in Atlantic Canada.