Urban Security Initiative

The Urban Security Project is a multi-disciplinary research effort examining the relationships between urban infrastructures (e.g., power , transportation, and sewer systems) and the natural environment. The different elements of a city are coupled, interacting and feeding back with each other in complex, sometimes counter-intuitive ways. We are developing a system of linked models in order to look at sustainability and vulnerability issues for cities.

The modeling system will be composed of linked high fidelity models for looking at processes in detail and simpler low fidelity models for end-user utilization. The multi-disciplinary nature of the project involves researchers from across the Laboratory with backgrounds in such areas as computer science, geographical information systems, atmospheric sciences, sub-surface transport, water chemistry, transportation, database management, electrical power systems, geophysics, and air quality.

FY98-99 Project

Research in the 1998-99 phase of the project emphasized one vulnerability and two longer-term sustainability scenarios. The former involved simulating earthquake ground motions in the LA basin, computing infrastructure damage, and predicting the resultant impact on the electrical power grid. Related to this, several researchers investigated how a city grows after an earthquake damages the city. The other sustainability scenario looked at modeling the pollutant transport life-cycle through air and water pathways in an urban environment. In addition to the scenario studies, another group worked on developing a web-based consensus building tool for emergency response planning, while another group continued work on the computer architecture framework.

Reports & Talks:

Introduction to the Urban Security Project
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The Urban Security Executive Summary written for the initial proposal.
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An overview of FY99 work: Urban Security - Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1999, LA-UR-99- (1999).
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An overview of FY98 work: Urban Security - Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1998, LA-UR-98- (1998).
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Legacy to the Future Framework (2000). Download 0.1 Mb pdf

Check out the main Urban Security Project Site.

Visit the Urban Air - Water Pathways Site.

Modeling Cities: The Los Alamos Urban Security Initiative, Heiken, Valentine, Brown, Rasmussen, George, Greene, Jones, Olsen, and Andersson, Public Works Management & Policy, v 4, pp. 198-212, LA-UR-99-324 (2000).
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Integrated Modeling of Earthquake Impacts to the Electric Power Infrastructure: Analyses of an Elysisan Park Scenario in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, Maheshwari and Dowell, URISA Conf., LA-UR-99-4429 (1999).
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Urban Security Initiative: Earthquake impacts on the urban system of systems, Maheshwari, Rasmussen, Jones, 1999 Conf. on the Applic. of Remote Sensing and GIS for Disaster Management, New Brunswick, NJ, LA-UR-99-778 (1999).

Integrated Environmental Modeling of the Urban Ecosystem, T. McPherson, S. Burian, M. Brown, G. Streit, and H. Turin, Earth Sciences in the Cities, AGU Monograph, eds. Heiken, Fakundiny, and Sutter, LA-UR-01-2348 (2001).

FY97 Pilot Project.
Research in the 1997 pilot-phase of the project concentrated on 1) coupling of atmospheric and hydrologic models for global climate change impact studies on precipitation and aquifer recharge, 2) linking plume dispersion and traffic microsimulation models for application to airborne toxic release and emergency response scenarios, 3) numerical grid generation techniques, and 4) conceptualization of the modeling, database, and computer architecture framework.

Reports & Talks:

An overview of FY97 work: Urban Security - Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1997, LA-UR-97-5169 (1997).
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Go to the Airborne Toxic Release / Emergency Response Site.

Check out the main Urban Security Project Site.

Urban Security Team
Michael Brown
Grant Heiken
Greg Valentine