Food security in the aftermath of a seismic event

California's farmlands yield a significant proportion of produce for the entire nation. An acute event, such as an earthquake, tornado, or wildfire, can severely disrupt food production in California, which may impact local and national food security. Additionally, a long-term event (e.g., drought) occurring in California may further decrease food production in the region when coupled with an earthquake. Therefore, this paper proposes to analyze the food production failure mechanism, conditioned on a major earthquake striking southern California, by using the 2008 Great Southern California ShakeOut scenario (which is based on a potential magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault). Furthermore, California has experienced a historic drought since 2011, characterized by frequent wildfires and dying forests. Hence, we also assess the food production failures from an earthquake coupled with a drought. Food production failure in both scenarios (i.e., an earthquake and an earthquake coupled with a drought) will be assessed using fault tree analysis (FTA). FTA is a top-down deductive risk assessment tool, which is structured with an overall system “failure” on the top (in this case food production failure), and beneath it, all of the intermediate and basic events that could cause failures. We adapted a fault tree model developed by the co-authors for the food system in Baltimore City to the food system in southern California. This resulting food-production failure assessment model may serve as a decision-support tool for stakeholders to facilitate planning for resilient food systems.