Chen Finds that Leveraging Residents as Sharing Captains in a Decentralized Scheme Significantly Enhances Community Resilience and Outperforms Status Quo Fixed-Point Distribution
Posted: 2/5/2026 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Affiliate Cynthia Chen (Civil & Environmental Engineering) published two studies that show untapped capacity for community resilience through place-based peer-to-peer (P2P) resource sharing. Both studies use data from two socioeconomically different communities in Seattle. First, in an article in Nature Cities, Chen demonstrated that under a 5-day isolation scenario, place-based P2P sharing can reduce a community’s resilience loss by 13.4–100%; on average, 22–44 social ties per household support an 80% sharing rate of surplus resources. In a related paper in Transportation Research, Chen simulated and compared the efficacy of a P2P decentralized scheme involving sharing captains (residents that take on the role of distributing resources among neighbors) against the status quo fixed-point distribution method that relies on residents to come and get resources. The decentralized P2P strategy reached 100% resource coverage faster. Moreover, while the success of P2P strategy lies fundamentally on residents’ willingness to share, a satisfactory outcome can be reached even when a substantial share of residents (40%) is unwilling to share with anybody.