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Title: Functionality recovery of steel grain bins in rural communities following the August 2020 Iowa derecho
Agriculturally-dominated rural communities are critical to the United States national economy, however the resilience of these communities has been noted to be considerably lower compared to their more urban counterparts. In August 2020, a derecho windstorm swept over 750 miles of land in the rural Midwest of the United States, inflicting particularly significant damage in the state of Iowa. While damage was observed to buildings, transmission lines, and other typical infrastructure, agricultural structures such as steel grain bins dominated damage reports. As a result, this storm provided an opportunity to study the performance of these critical agricultural structures under high winds as well as to evaluate the recovery of their functionality over time, in an effort to understand the unique contributors to agricultural and rural resilience. To this end, over 160 agricultural sites and over 700 individual steel grain bins were surveyed immediately following the storm and after one year. The state was split into seven widespread regions, which were then separated based on business site. Each bin was recorded by their initial state of damage, followed by other characteristics, such as dimensions, county socioeconomic factors, and ownership types. It was found that high initial damage, large bin capacity, and high county-level unemployment rates positively correlated with a change in functionality. Of particular note is the relationship with ownership type, where agricultural cooperatives initially suffered more bin losses compared to private farms, but were able to recover at a much faster rate.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1950597 2050152
PAR ID:
10398303
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
3rd International Conference on Natural Hazards & Infrastructure (ICONHIC2022)
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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