In September 2018, Hurricane Florence caused $38 billion in damages and 53 fatalities and highlighted the risk of cascading disasters – chains of events in which a primary disruption triggers a sequence of secondary and then tertiary disruptions – in North Carolina. This project team studied the cascading disasters that occurred in North Carolina as a result of Hurricane Florence, with a focus on widespread power outages, coal ash spills and hog-waste lagoon overflows.

Using news analysis and stakeholder interviews to understand the chain of events following Hurricane Florence, the team generated maps using remote sensing data and GIS to identify relations between system failures and environmental and socio-demographic patterns. The team created conceptual models of the cascading disasters using event trees and causal networks that can inform models to identify potential warning signs, points of intervention and other opportunities to interrupt the observed chains of events. The team also reviewed legislation, policy, regulations and previous community efforts related to cascading failures and developed policy briefs detailing policy issues and recommendations for energy system failures and coal ash and hog farm management.

Timing

Spring 2019

Team Outputs

Mark E. Borsuk. Building Community Resilience to Natural-disaster-Driven Contaminant Exposures Through System-level Risk Analysis, Management, and Readiness ($799,756 grant awarded from Environmental Protection Agency, 2020)

Coal Ash (policy brief)

Substation Hardening for Electricity Resiliency (policy brief presented to the North Carolina Utilities Commission)

This Team in the News

New Bass Connections Project: Understanding the Initiation and Transmission of Cascading Hazards

New Project Teams Will Tackle Research to Inform Hurricane Preparedness and Resiliency Effort