ABSTRACT
COVID-19 epidemic has changed many people's life. There has been an increase in cybercrime and cyber-attacks on infrastructure systems throughout the world. To reduce the impact of social alienation, a significant rise has been observed in the utilization and dependence on computers, handheld devices, and web to perform day-to-day activities like communication, work, online transactions for shopping, and medical diagnostics throughout the pandemic. Criminals were able to take advantage of new weaknesses generated because of movement of the work place to home for their own individual advantage. In a postpandemic world, ab roader and diverse cyber security approach is required to assure the well-being and continuation of crucial systems on which our mankind depends. This research work shows the preliminary design of the proposed solution, which is built based on the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled self-replication system. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Antifragility, which is an evolutionary understanding of resilience, has become a predominant concept in academic and industrial fields as the criticality of vital infrastructures (like healthcare and transportation) has become more flexible and varying due the impact of digitization and adverse circumstances, such as changing the prioritization of industrial services while accelerating IoT (Internet of Things) deployment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The crucial role of antifragility is to enable critical infrastructures to gain from disorder to foster their adaptability to real unexpected environmental changes. Thus, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on the antifragility concept while clarifying the difference with the resilience concept. Moreover, it highlights how the COVID-19 crisis has revealed the fragility of critical infrastructures and unintentionally promoted the antifragility concept. To showcase the main concepts, we adopt the blockchain as an example of an antifragile system. Copyright © 2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Smart cities carry the burden of utilizing technologies to support city life during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. More than ever, true smartness needs to address the broader health implications of the shared urban space. Especially highly populated cities tend to suffer more from the consequences of Covid-19 than rural areas. Without a doubt, the pandemic has revealed particular weaknesses of the existing urban environment, in urban space and population demographics, so evident of unprepared city infrastructure systems. The traditional design of public space has created inequalities, and such space design serves the needs of a commercialized urban context and enables public gatherings or private/commercial access. The sudden behavioral shift needed in cities means that smart solutions are also needed for the health and well-being of city populations. This paper examines the impact in the urban environments for London, Manchester, Newcastle, and Liverpool. This paper maps the implications of physical distancing due to Covid-19 using cases studies in three main areas: i) roads, ii) parks, and iii) retail. A matrix of urban, social, and health consequences is suggested, which will shape urban policy. It will focus on terms of access and use of urban space during the pandemic and beyond. The expected outcome of this research is to map some of the metropolitan area to demonstrate restrictions, changes in sharing behavior, and gamification opportunities of urban space. The expected outcomes will provide evidence-based scenarios for gamification technologies (for example, wayfinding, location, and character-based) of the challenged urban space in roads, parks, and retail to support change in future policy. The paper will discuss the implications of behavior change and consider so-called "gamification” practices in the urban space, using examples of social distancing, movement tracing, and techniques that add to a truly smart city. Overall, the aim is to demonstrate the spatial constraints of Covid-19;social distancing as the main challenge and to explore how the design of urban form and smart systems will provide for a healthy and resilient urban environment. This research addresses good urban health and a playful approach to the new way of urban living. © 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a reduction in business and routine activity and resulted in less motor fuel consumption. Thus, the gas tax revenue is reduced, which is the major funding resource supporting the rehabilitation and maintenance of transportation infrastructure systems. The focus of this study is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on transportation infrastructure funds in the United States through analyzing the motor fuel consumption data. Machine learning models were developed by integrating COVID-19 scenarios, fuel consumptions, and demographic data. The best model achieves an R2-score of more than 95% and captures the fluctuations of fuel consumption during the pandemic. Using the developed model, we project future motor gas consumption for each state. For some states, the gas tax revenues are going to be 10%-15% lower than the pre-pandemic level for at least one or two years. © 2022 International Conference on Transportation and Development
ABSTRACT
Antifragility, which is an evolutionary understanding of resilience, has become a predominant concept in academic and industrial fields as the criticality of vital infrastructures (like healthcare and transportation) has become more flexible and varying due the impact of digitization and adverse circumstances, such as changing the prioritization of industrial services while accelerating IoT (Internet of Things) deployment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The crucial role of antifragility is to enable critical infrastructures to gain from disorder to foster their adaptability to real unexpected environmental changes. Thus, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on the antifragility concept while clarifying the difference with the resilience concept. Moreover, it highlights how the COVID-19 crisis has revealed the fragility of critical infrastructures and unintentionally promoted the antifragility concept. To showcase the main concepts, we adopt the blockchain as an example of an antifragile system.
ABSTRACT
Social distancing policies (SDPs) implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to temporal and spatial shifts in water demand across cities. Water utilities need to understand these demand shifts to respond to potential operational and water-quality issues. Aided by a fixed-effects model of citywide water demand in Austin, Texas, we explore the impacts of various SDPs (e.g., time after the stay home-work safe order, reopening phases) using daily demand data gathered between 2013 and 2020. Our approach uses socio-technical determinants (e.g., climate, water conservation policy) with SDPs to model water demand, while accounting for spatial and temporal effects (e.g., geographic variations, weekday patterns). Results indicate shifts in behavior of residential and nonresidential demands that offset the change at the system scale, demonstrating a spatial redistribution of water demand after the stay home-work safe order. Our results show that some phases of Texas's reopening phases had statistically significant relationships to water demand. While this yielded only marginal net effects on overall demand, it underscores behavioral changes in demand at sub-system spatial scales. Our discussions shed light on SDPs' impacts on water demand. Equipped with our empirical findings, utilities can respond to potential vulnerabilities in their systems, such as water-quality problems that may be related to changes in water pressure in response to demand variations.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Water , Humans , Pandemics , Physical Distancing , Policy , Population Dynamics , SARS-CoV-2 , Water SupplyABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Large-scale events such as COVID-19 show that there are situations that can lead to huge stress on health infrastructure systems (HIS). The pandemic reveals that it is very difficult to protect HIS from all kinds of possible hazards. They can be unpredictable and spread rapidly; hence, it is hard to find an effective mitigation strategy to completely protect society and its important HIS. METHODS: An often raised central question is what we should do if we cannot protect HIS from these types of hazards. To answer this question, the focus should move from HIS protection to HIS resilience. Therefore, in this paper, the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Index (CIRI) is used to estimate the resilience of health infrastructure systems. RESULTS: The results of the case study show that HIS resilience was enhanced significantly after the implementation of measures. The results indicate that among the resilience phases the learning phase of resilience is the weakest part. This requires a root cause analysis, which should be prioritized by HIS managers and stakeholders. CONCLUSION: This paper discusses how the resilience concept will help decision- and policy-makers to have a clear view of HIS performance before, during, and after the disaster. An easy-to-use and applicable methodology for HIS assessment and evaluation was employed. It can be concluded that resilience and its identified phases can help HIS managers to allocate available resources accordingly in the phases during and post-crisis.