Date of Graduation

12-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering (MSIE)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Industrial Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Nurre Pinkley, Sarah G.

Committee Member

Sullivan, Kelly M.

Second Committee Member

Runkle, Benjamin R.

Keywords

food scarcity; productivity

Abstract

This work classifies examples of infrastructure interdependencies found in the food and agriculture critical infrastructure sector. Interdependencies are identified through an examination of rice and poultry agriculture throughout the state of Arkansas. The subtleties of interdependence examples in the food and agriculture sector are inadequately captured by the well-studied interdependence classification taxonomies. Through 39 interviews, we develop an understanding of the subtle temporal, geographic, and productivity scales of interdependence in over 100 examples and present five new, distinct classifications of interdependence: (1) dynamic physical, (2) dynamic geographic, (3) deadline, (4) delay, and (5) human, economic, and natural resource interdependencies. An analysis of these inter- dependencies and their intricacies provides the opportunity to generalize these ideas across other critical infrastructure sectors and model infrastructure restoration and resilience with greater concern for seasonality, resource scarcity, and punctuality.

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