Developing a functional model for cities impacted by a natural hazard: application to a city affected by flooding

The experience feedback on a crisis that hit a city is frequently used as a “recollection” tool. To capitalize information about an experience feedback from the cities that have been affected by a natural hazard, the authors propose in this study a functional model to model scenarios of city crises. In this model, the city, considered as a complex system, was modelled using a functional analysis method. Based on such modelling, two risk analysis methods (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Event Tree Method) were deployed and adjusted. Lastly, a qualitative reasoning model was used for the scenario modelling of the urban crisis. By functional modelling performed on components of the cities, the objective of this model is to replicate the behaviour of a city affected by a crisis, highlighting the sequences of failure and non-failure modes that have operated during the crisis. This model constitutes a means of understanding the functional behaviour in a crisis of cities and capitalization of the experience feedback of the cities affected by crisis. Such functional modelling was deployed in a case study.