The aging underground infrastructure in New York City poses a significant risk, but traditional hazard analysis doesn't consider the economic and social costs of failure. Direct burial of infrastructure leads to environmental degradation of the infrastructure and continuous street excavation to access infrastructure for repairs, and accidental damage during repair work. The transition to modern solutions is complicated by incomplete subsurface infrastructure location data and reluctance to share what data exists. 

Debriefing LAMP.1 and QUIETed

The Fall 2021 Tandon/MOT capstone project, Location Analyze Measure and Prioritize (LAMP), used DOT street-related data and 311 data to suggest subsurface vulnerabilities in a data visualization tool for Manhattan. The original problem was a  lack of subsurface infrastructure locational data posited as an impediment to utilidors.  The use of surface data in LAMP.1 was to suggest aging subsurface infrastructure vulnerability and disruptions.  

The Fall 2022 Tandon/MOT capstone project, Quantifying Urban Infrastructure Economic and Transit Disruptions (QUIETed), analyzed the traffic impacts with Streetlight data of four subsurface infrastructure failure case studies and linked those failures to authorized capital projects in the City Planning map and Community District capital needs statements.

Our Project LAMP. 3 (LAMP. 1 + QUIETeD Tool)

This project intended to put the work of LAMP. 1 and QUIETeD together as a full methodology with prior (updated) and new data to suggest the aging infrastructure vulnerability in the absence of locational data, resulting disruptions and economic/social impact from disruptions. The new data consists of Notice of Claims data, DOT street condition data for additional vulnerability, and other 311 complaint-type data for additional vulnerability.

All data would be combined into one borough map, creating a Minimum Viable Product with layers for each data source and an ability to combine them for analytical purposes.

This model shows the Replicability and Scalability of the original model.

We created a methodology and analytical tool that fills out the aging infrastructure vulnerability, disruptions, economic, and social impact issues, which can be used to tie the knowledge derived from the tool back to capital planning processes. 

We developed a fully-loaded methodology and analytical tool, obtained data from various sources, and performed exploratory data analysis using the OSEMN process, then created visualizations in Tableau and ArcGIS. 

We designed and documented the fully-loaded methodology and outline of the tool, developed a minimum viable product with analytical features, created a repository and a website for all the data and visualizations, and published dashboards.

We made the tool and datasets available for our sponsors.