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Development of a hybrid simulation model for understanding community resilience to fuel disruption

University of British Columbia

Coastal and island communities in British Columbia are dependent on a multi-modal transportation network to support their basic needs, such as transportation of critical supplies. The network involves both land and marine transportation modes, various stakeholders and facilities. A broad range of potential disruptions, including natural disasters and human-induced events, threatens this system. Among all the critical supplies, fuel is of special importance. Fuel is required by not only the general consumers but also the emergency responses vehicles and facilities. The remote and semi-remote communities, which are at the end of the supply chain, will experience shortages of critical supplies if the regular transportation service is disrupted beyond the level that can be met using the local inventory. There is a critical need to understand fuel resilience and plan for potential fuel disruptions from the demand-side perspective. In this thesis, a hybrid model for simulating the community fuel supply, demand and inventory is presented. The development of the model is preceded by a detailed study of consumer behaviors and community fuel inventory strategies. In the model, a hypothesized hoarding mechanism to describe and predict consumer behaviors is established. Four disruption scenarios are created. Several strategies that may enhance the community resilience are proposed. The hybrid model is applied to the case study area, Powell River. It contributes to evaluate current fuel system resilience and examine the effectiveness of the proposed strategies. The simulation results demonstrate the importance of restraining possible consumer hoarding behaviors and conducting efficient inventory management. The concerns and recommendations from this thesis may lay the foundation for further exploration fuel resilience from the demand side.

Text

2017-10-23

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/63418

Resources, Environment and Sustainability

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/