A key focus of the HES lab is resilient and sustainable infrastructure, particularly in rural and remote areas. This includes assessment of critical supply chains, identification of unique and understudied infrastructure, and modeling of social-ecological-technological infrastructure systems.
Projects
CLIMES
CLIMES — the CoLaborative for Intersectoral Modeling of the Earth System — is a five-group interdisciplinary research collaborative at the University of Wyoming that builds quantitative, computational projections of human and Earth system futures at regional scales. Bridging atmospheric science, ecology, economics, social science, fire science, and hydrology, CLIMES develops AI-assisted simulation models and interactive decision-support tools to help planners and policymakers build resilient communities. HES lab contributions to CLIMES have focused on wildfire and wildfire smoke impacts in gateway communities and US National Parks.
ARCAP — Alaska Railbelt Critical Assets Project
ARCAP is a multi-institution project funded by the ADAC-ARCTIC Center of Excellence (DHS) to evaluate and strengthen the resilience of the Port of Alaska (PoA) — a single point of failure for the entire state's supply chain and a node critical to fuel distribution, Arctic shipping, and multiple DHS missions. The project integrates critical infrastructure analysis, expert and stakeholder elicitation, and tabletop exercises to identify gaps in infrastructure security and resilience and develop actionable strategies. HES lab contributions center on two interconnected efforts: extending and refining DHS definitions of critical infrastructure to the Alaska context, and synthesizing the history of resilience efforts, interdependencies, and natural hazards at PoA. These include an interactive Alaska Critical Infrastructure Systems Timeline Map and ongoing work to contextualize the Port within the broader Railbelt region and catalog novel cyber-physical infrastructure across Alaska.