Interdependencies and risk to people and critical food, energy, and water systems: 2013 Flood, Boulder, Colorado, USA

By illustrating the risks to people and critical food-energy-water systems of a low probability, high-impact event, we draw lessons on what is likely to occur in the future. Other scholars have modeled the influence of interdependent infrastructures on cascading effects.

But this is one of the first studies integrating stakeholders' understanding of the influence of interdependent actions, institutions, and infrastructures. These interdependencies create the conditions for vulnerability, which is a product of multiscale and dynamic sociodemographic, economic, technologic, environmental, and governance interactions. Political histories and historical decisions on where and how to design infrastructure exert a deep influence on short- and long-term capacity to manage risk.