Thresholds in road network functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf barrier islands
Thresholds in road network functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf barrier islands
Barrier islands predominate the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines of the USA, where population and infrastructure growth exceed national trends. Forward-looking models of barrier island dynamics often include feedbacks with real estate markets and management practices aimed at mitigating damage to buildings from natural hazards. However, such models thus far do not account for networks of infrastructure, such as roads, and how the functioning of infrastructure networks might influence management strategies. Understanding infrastructure networks on barrier islands is an essential step toward improved insight into the future dynamics of human-altered barriers. Here, we examine thresholds in the functioning of 72 US Atlantic and Gulf Coast barrier islands. We use digital elevation models to assign an elevation to each intersection in each road network. From each road network we sequentially remove intersections, starting from the lowest elevation. We use the maxima of the second giant connected component to identify a specific intersection—and corresponding elevation—at which functioning of the network fails, and we match the elevation of each critical intersection to local annual exceedance probabilities for extreme high-water levels. We find a range of failure thresholds for barrier island road network functioning, and also find that no single metric—absolute elevation, annual exceedance probability, or a quantitative metric of robustness—sufficiently ranks the susceptibility of barrier road networks to failure. Future work can incorporate thresholds for road network into forward-looking models of barrier island dynamics that include hazard-mitigation practices for protecting infrastructure.
barrier island, development, flooding, network analysis, network robustness, road network
Aldabet, Sofia
595eb897-2862-4aac-ade1-1ee522364ea9
Lazarus, Eli
642a3cdb-0d25-48b1-8ab8-8d1d72daca6e
Goldstein, Evan B.
25029a23-b5b1-4e08-9273-a62343cc8ec3
5 May 2022
Aldabet, Sofia
595eb897-2862-4aac-ade1-1ee522364ea9
Lazarus, Eli
642a3cdb-0d25-48b1-8ab8-8d1d72daca6e
Goldstein, Evan B.
25029a23-b5b1-4e08-9273-a62343cc8ec3
Aldabet, Sofia, Lazarus, Eli and Goldstein, Evan B.
(2022)
Thresholds in road network functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf barrier islands.
Earth's Future, 10 (5), [e2021EF002581].
(doi:10.1029/2021EF002581).
Abstract
Barrier islands predominate the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines of the USA, where population and infrastructure growth exceed national trends. Forward-looking models of barrier island dynamics often include feedbacks with real estate markets and management practices aimed at mitigating damage to buildings from natural hazards. However, such models thus far do not account for networks of infrastructure, such as roads, and how the functioning of infrastructure networks might influence management strategies. Understanding infrastructure networks on barrier islands is an essential step toward improved insight into the future dynamics of human-altered barriers. Here, we examine thresholds in the functioning of 72 US Atlantic and Gulf Coast barrier islands. We use digital elevation models to assign an elevation to each intersection in each road network. From each road network we sequentially remove intersections, starting from the lowest elevation. We use the maxima of the second giant connected component to identify a specific intersection—and corresponding elevation—at which functioning of the network fails, and we match the elevation of each critical intersection to local annual exceedance probabilities for extreme high-water levels. We find a range of failure thresholds for barrier island road network functioning, and also find that no single metric—absolute elevation, annual exceedance probability, or a quantitative metric of robustness—sufficiently ranks the susceptibility of barrier road networks to failure. Future work can incorporate thresholds for road network into forward-looking models of barrier island dynamics that include hazard-mitigation practices for protecting infrastructure.
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Earth s Future - 2022 - Aldabet - Thresholds in Road Network Functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf Barrier Islands
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Accepted/In Press date: 24 April 2022
Published date: 5 May 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
EBG and EDL thank Katherine Anarde, Beth Sciaudone, Kenny Ells, and Dylan McNamara for fruitful discussions. We thank Julia Mulhern and Cari Johnson for sharing data and making it openly accessible; we also thank the Editor, an anonymous reviewer, and Stuart Pearson for helpful comments. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from a Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute Doctoral Studentship (to SA), The Leverhulme Trust (RPG‐2018‐282, to EDL and EBG), and an Early‐Career Research Fellowship from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (to EBG). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors.
Keywords:
barrier island, development, flooding, network analysis, network robustness, road network
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 467615
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/467615
ISSN: 2328-4277
PURE UUID: 8d8d7a0d-71f5-4d39-a72e-678777a14126
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Date deposited: 15 Jul 2022 16:32
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:44
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Author:
Sofia Aldabet
Author:
Evan B. Goldstein
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