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Abstract Recent major investments in infrastructure in the United States and globally present a crucial opportunity to embed equity within the heart of resilient infrastructure decision-making. Yet there is a notable absence of frameworks within the engineering and scientific fields for integrating equity into planning, design, and maintenance of infrastructure. Additionally, whole-of-government approaches to infrastructure, including the Justice40 Initiative, mimic elements of process management that support exploitative rather than exploratory innovation. These and other policies risk creating innovation traps that limit analytical and engineering advances necessary to prioritize equity in decision-making, identification and disruption of mechanisms that cause or contribute to inequities, and remediation of historic harms. Here, we propose a three-tiered framework toward equitable and resilient infrastructure through restorative justice, incremental policy innovation, and exploratory research innovation. This framework aims to ensure equitable access and benefits of infrastructure, minimize risk disparities, and embrace restorative justice to repair historical and systemic inequities. We outline incremental policy innovation and exploratory research action items to address and mitigate risk disparities, emphasizing the need for community-engaged research and the development of equity metrics. Among other action items, we recommend a certification system—referred to as Social, Environmental, and Economic Development (SEED)—to train infrastructure engineers and planners and ensure attentiveness to gaps that exist within and dynamically interact across each tier of the proposed framework. Through the framework and proposed actions, we advocate for a transformative vision for equitable infrastructure that emphasizes the interconnectedness of social, environmental, and technical dimensions in infrastructure planning, design, and maintenance. 

There are growing concerns regarding the increase in flood risk due to climate change and land use/land cover changes. In light of these changes, levees play an increasingly critical role in safeguarding communities, infrastructure, and the natural environment. However, the average age of levees in the United States is 60 years, with the majority operating under marginal conditions. The most common failure mode of earthen levees is breach due to overtopping. Existing methodologies evaluate the site-specific probability of levee overtopping and do not provide a holistic view of flood risk across a wider area. Here we present a regional-scale overtopping model for levees using a data-driven overtopping model that uses five variables: (1) levee construction classification, (2) overtopping depth, (3) overtopping duration, (4) erosion resistance classification, and (5) duration of levee loading before overtopping. The overtopping model is applied to levee systems in Wilton, California. The probability of breach due to overtopping is presented for three distinct scenarios (overtopping duration) during a 50-year flood event. The results show the probability of breach for the Wilton Levee ranges from 0.32 to 0.91 for overtopping durations of 6 hours and between 6 to 24 hours. For durations exceeding 24 hours, the probability of breach increases to a range of 0.73 to 0.98. The proposed framework offers a viable tool for performing regional-scale levee risk assessment, offering broader implications for enhancing preparedness, response, and recovery strategies in the face of escalating flood risks.