In 2004 and 2005, NISAC evaluated the western Gulf Coast region. NISAC

• developed a National Petroleum System Simulator to evaluate the potential short-term effects of disruptions in the western Gulf Coast petroleum infrastructure operations on the rest of the country,
• developed a data model of the petrochemical industry in the region to evaluate the potential impacts of disruptions within the chemical region in that region, and
• adapted the NISAC Port Operations Simulator to the Houston container port to for simulating the potential effects of security measures and infrastructure disruptions on container operations.

These modeling tools allow us to simulate and evaluate potential problems in water transport, petroleum and petrochemical-related national security events, and policies before they occur or are implemented. The models also allow us to evaluate the potential impacts in the event of a loss of specific port, petroleum, or petrochemical facilities or operations due to terrorism or natural disaster events.  The national petroleum and chemical industry models were used in the analysis of potential impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Regional Collaboration

The NISAC simulation and analysis team worked with U.S. Coast Guard staff; private-sector partners representing the petroleum, water transportation, and chemical industries; and regional manufacturing associations throughout the project development, model development, and analysis phases. NISAC held outreach workshops with representatives from each of the collaboration groups to review key regional issues and concerns. Participants, including security and operations experts, also reviewed and validated the simulation and analysis results, and identified areas for further collaboration.

Workshops are also an important part of the NISAC development and testing process. They demonstrate the capabilities and utility of NISAC’s tools and analyses, elicit feedback from participants, and expand NISAC collaborations. They also allow participants to gain a systems perspective on how infrastructures and their interdependencies influence the impact of disruptive events and how those impacts may change under different environmental, regulatory, and policy conditions. NISAC, in turn, benefits from the knowledge and experience of experts working in maritime-related government and industry. The NISAC models are continually refined based on workshop results.

The Barbours Cut port operations model provides users with the added ability to run five predefined disruption scenarios

1. loss of electric power,
2. breakdown in telecommunications,
3. port security threat/shutdown,
4. labor disruption, and a
5. maritime security level III (MARSEC 3) alert

to evaluate port response to the disruption under user-selected conditions. As the predefined disruption model runs, users can manipulate various controls to determine how best to respond and recover from the disruption (or combination of disruptions).

The NISAC simulators can be modified to apply to other ports.

Pandemic Influenza Impact on Workforce and Critical Infrastructure

NISAC models have been enhanced to simulate multiscale epidemiology and the public health infrastructure. NISAC analysts are using these models to examine disease spread at census-tract level nationally and at an individual level on a regional scale.

Using expected manifestations at the seasonal, 1958/68, and 1918 pandemic levels, explicit modeling of relevant aspects of the public health system has enabled NISAC to couple model output to population, workforce, infrastructure asset, and economic consequence assessments. Analyzed for geospatial structure, modeling output has revealed hotspots, strong correlations with average household size, and other demographic characteristics, emphasizing the importance of geospatial structure for pandemic planning at the local level.

Selected aspects of proposed national pandemic plans, mitigation, and response options are being simulated in this ongoing project. In-depth sensitivity analysis is planned for strategies deemed most effective and robust.

Pandemic Influenza Policy Analysis

Conclusions from the epidemiological and mitigation strategy analyses conducted to date include:

• Response time is most important, other factors are secondary.
• Partially effective response early is best.
• Geospatial dynamics are important.
• Face masks can reduce or prevent an epidemic.
• Border control can only delay an epidemic, and a 95% reduction in the contagious individuals entering the country delays the epidemic by 5 weeks.
• Social distancing is also effective in delaying an epidemic, but returning to normal interactions without other mitigation measures causes waves of outbreaks. This strategy corresponds to historical interventions and disease outbreaks.

Working in collaboration with the DHS Science and Technology’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Decision Support System (CIPDSS) program, NISAC developed models of workforce impacts on infrastructure operations. We will use these models to evaluate pandemic effects on infrastructures and provide input to the analysis of national economic impacts.

Modeling/Analysis Approach

NISAC

• Translated epidemiological results, using population and workforce data, into impacts on labor categories by infrastructure, industry, and commercial sector.
• Modeled functional relationships of labor categories on infrastructure operations for each sector.
• Used reductions in workforce to estimate reductions in infrastructure service provision.
• Modeled impacts of mitigation strategies on workforce and used the results to estimate impacts on infrastructure service provision.

NISAC uses systems models of infrastructures to evaluate the effects of labor shortages on operations (transportation, telecom, and energy) and data analysis to develop labor models for the other infrastructures (banking and finance, water, government, agriculture/food, etc.). Different processes in infrastructure supply chains are represented in the model and include the effects on the workforce due to illness, parents having to stay home with sick children, employees refusing to go to work out of fear (worried well), and fatigue in staff that are working extraordinary hours.

The NISAC and CIPDSS approach to estimating the economic impacts of a pandemic are comprehensive and multi- dimensional, based on known interactions between labor supply, industry output, consumer demand, and households. By having the economics modeling take a systems approach that is similar to the epidemiological and infrastructure modeling approach, a rich environment is created for cross-model comparison and validation.

Estimating the Economic Impacts of a Pandemic Influenza

NISAC applied a central model of how firms adapt to labor losses, under varying epidemiological and government response conditions, to estimate the impacts of pandemic morbidity and mortality on infrastructures, their interdependencies, and the economy. Analyses include identifying infrastructure and economic vulnerabilities caused by labor losses and overall economic conditions. Estimates are made of

• firm-level responses by industry, firm-size, and policy taken;
• socio-demographic effects; and
• regional and national short-run and long-run losses in output, employment, trade, and price levels.

The Fast Analysis and Simulation Team (FAST) was formulated to serve as a central resource point for DHS in providing relevant and practical information in response to issues of national importance under limited time constraints.

NISAC developed models and tools, as well as the significant subject-matter expertise contained within the NISAC team, are used to provide insight and analysis pertaining to the questions as posed. FAST also integrates expertise from throughout NISAC, including the core partners, their collaborators, and system experts.

Information Focus

The team’s information and analyses cover wide-ranging subjects. Some common themes include

• Who will be affected (population, economic sectors), and how (duration, scale)?
• What are the economic impacts
• by economic or industrial sector, by state or region?
• for the insured and uninsured?
• with respect to abandoned and deferred purchases?
• What are the unexpected consequences, primarily with respect to infrastructure interdependencies?

Analyses include simulations of each infrastructure sector. Simulation tools include economic modeling and dynamic simulations of infrastructures and their interdependencies.

In some cases, NISAC can complete an analysis without running computer-generated simulations, relying instead on (1) the subject-matter and technical expertise resident in the program staff and (2) data assessment using spatial or other appropriate techniques. Toolsets developed by NISAC support the archiving of knowledge, previous analyses, and simulations. Frequently, ‘nuggets of information,’ or interesting and salient facts discerned from data mining, will provide insight into an issue, determining the focus of the analysis.

Scenario

NISAC simulated a magnitude 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia fault, with a tsunami resulting from the earthquake. We then used the ground shaking and tsunami effects to assess the scenario’s infrastructure impacts. The analysis assumes that the disaster event takes place at the current time and proceeds by evaluating human impacts and cascading infrastructure effects within the earthquake impact zone. Finally, we estimated economic impacts. Each of these impact areas (human, infrastructure, and economic) are summarized in the key findings below.

Key Findings

Human Impacts

This study first examined the impacts of the earthquake and tsunami on the human population within the affected area. The expected damage and loss of life would occur along the coastal regions of northern California, Oregon, and Washington. The analysis produced an estimate of 3,000 or more fatalities from the tsunami and ground-shaking effects.

Major Infrastructure Impacts

The entire region would experience extensive electrical outages, with medium-term outages forecast for the coastal areas. Restoration is expected to occur on a prioritized basis within one to eight days. Both the natural gas transmission pipeline and the networks of distribution pipelines in the affected region are likely to suffer enough damage for the majority of customers in western Washington and western Oregon to lose natural gas service. Major undersea transoceanic cables are likely to be severed, disrupting communication service to East Asia as well as between Alaska and the contiguous United States, with a two- to three-month expected restoration time.

Economic Impacts

The total economic impacts are projected to be nearly $70 billion, with nearly $20 billion of that in direct impacts and nearly $50 billion in indirect impacts. Washington State has the largest share (70 percent), with $11 billion in direct and $38 billion in indirect impacts.

The most important issues in hurricane Irene’s U.S. landfall were similar to those faced after most major hurricanes

• rescuing and treating people stranded and/or injured by the storm;
• distributing basic services to the population (safe drinking water, food, and shelter);
• restoring normal infrastructure services; and
• rebuilding structures.

Major issues included evacuating population living in the surge zone; power outages; and the impacts of power outage, storm surge, and debris on the functioning of local emergency services, road transportation, air transportation, water supply, wastewater treatment, and communications.

Based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) projected storm path, which indicated a broad area of impact from South Carolina to Maine, NISAC estimated areas of storm surge and power outage. Using these results, NISAC provided warning of the following potential issues that could result from hurricane Irene:

• The daytime population in the expected inundation area is about 1.2 million people.
• A large number of chemical facilities (700+) were projected to lose power, resulting in potential supply-chain impacts.
• Key Internet facilities, including MAE East, New York International Internet Exchange, and Flag Telecom Landing, were in projected surge zone. This could result in local Internet outages.
• Flooding and power outages at Reagan Washington National Airport and Norfolk International Airport as well as some level of inundation at all New York City airports could have regionally significant impact and potential national slowdowns in air traffic.
• Direct damage to port facilities and aids to navigation were expected as a result of inundation and storm surge. Port of New York/New Jersey could potentially be heavily impacted by the storm surge.