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A useful theoretical lens that has emerged for understanding urban resilience is the four basic types of interdependencies in critical infrastructures: the physical, geographic, cyber, and logical types. This paper is motivated by a conceptual and methodological limitation—althoughlogicalinterdependencies (where two infrastructures affect the state of each other via human decisions) are regarded as one of the basic types of interdependencies, the question of how to apply the notion and how to quantify logical relations remains under‐explored. To overcome this limitation, this study focuses on institutions (rules), for example, rules and planned tasks guiding human interactions with one another and infrastructure. Such rule‐mediated interactions, when linguistically expressed, have a syntactic form that can be translated into a network form. We provide a foundation to delineate these two forms to detect logical interdependence. Specifically, we propose an approach to quantify logical interdependence based on the idea that (1) there are certainnetwork motifsindicating logical relations, (2) such network motifs can be discerned from the network form of rules, and that (3) the higher the frequency of these motifs between two infrastructures, the greater the extent of logical interdependency. We develop a set of such motifs and illustrate their usage using an example. We conclude by suggesting a revision to the original definition of logical interdependence. This rule‐focused approach is relevant to understanding human error in risk analysis of socio‐technical systems, as human error can be seen as deviations from constraints that lead to accidents.

 

Abstract. The Columbia River Treaty (CRT) signed between the United States and Canada in 1961 is known as one of the most successful transboundary watertreaties. Under continued cooperation, both countries equitably share collective responsibilities of reservoir operations and flood control andhydropower benefits from treaty dams. As the balance of benefits is the key factor of cooperation, future cooperation could be challenged byexternal social and environmental factors which were not originally anticipated or change in the social preferences of the two actors. To understandthe robustness of cooperation dynamics, we address two research questions. (i) How does social and environmental change influence cooperationdynamics? (ii) How do social preferences influence the probability of cooperation for both actors? We analyzed infrastructural, hydrological,economic, social, and environmental data to inform the development of a socio-hydrological system dynamics model. The model simulates the dynamicsof flood control and hydropower benefit sharing as a function of the probability to cooperate, which in turn is affected by the share ofbenefits. The model is used to evaluate scenarios that represent environmental and institutional change and changes in political characteristicsbased on social preferences. Our findings show that stronger institutional capacity ensures equitable sharing of benefits over the long term. Under the current CRT, the utility of cooperation is always higher for Canada than non-cooperation, which is in contrast to the United States. The probability tocooperate for each country is lowest when they are self-interested but fluctuates in other social preference scenarios.