In February 2021, severe winter weather conditions associated with Winter Storm Uri triggered an energy infrastructure failure in Texas. Most Texans lost electricity, some lost potable water, natural gas, and suffered other infrastructure-related service disruptions that had profound household consequences. Although several studies have documented the disparities in terms of the types and extent of disruptions Texans experienced during Uri, there is little information about the impact of these disruptions in terms of their burdens on households. Guided by the Capabilities Approach framework, a survey of Texan households was conducted to identify the outage characteristics and capability losses for different household types, as well as the
Agent-Based Modeling Framework for Simulation of Societal Impacts of Infrastructure Service Disruptions during Disasters
The objective of this paper is to model and examine the impacts of different levels of
infrastructure service losses caused by disasters on the households’ well-being residing in a community. An agent-based simulation model was developed to capture complex mechanisms underlying households’ tolerance for the service outages, including household characteristics (e.g., sociodemographic, social capital, resources, and previous disaster experience), physical infrastructure attributes, and extreme disruptive events. The rules governing these mechanisms were determined using empirical survey data collected from the residents of Harris County affected by Hurricane Harvey as well as the existing models for power outages and service restoration times. The analysis results highlighted the spatial diffusion of service risks among households living in affected areas in disasters. The proposed simulation model will provide utility agencies with an analytical tool for prioritization of infrastructure service restoration actions to effectively mitigate the societal impacts of service losses.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1846069
- PAR ID:
- 10132866
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Workshop
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract burdens that those disruptions posed to households using both objective and subjective measures. Our results indicate that households that endured longer and constant electricity outages suffered more severe impacts across all measures, including more disrupted household capabilities, increased time, and financial costs to cope during the outages, as well as greater declines in reported life satisfaction. We found that low-income households, households with children, and households with disability challenges suffered more severe objective burdens during the storm, although subjective results for these households were mixed. Households with members over the age of 65 fared better in terms of objective measures, yet suffered more in terms of subjective well-being. Moreover, households that had prior experience with a prolonged outage reported significantly smaller reductions in well-being during the storm than other households, despite not showing any difference in objective measures. Ultimately, our results offer context-specific, post-event information about the impacts and needs of different types of households during Uri that are important for informing emergency management and community resilience planning. -
null (Ed.)The objective of this study is to empirically assess household susceptibility to the power disruptions during disasters. In this study, a service gap model is utilized to characterize household susceptibility to infrastructure service disruptions. The empirical household survey data collected from Harris County, Texas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey was employed in developing an appropriate empirical model to specify the significance of various factors influencing household susceptibility. Various factors influencing households’ susceptibility were implemented in developing the models. The step-wise algorithm was used to choose the best subset of variables, and availability of substitutes, previous hazards experience, level of need, access to reliable information, race, service expectations, social capital, and residence duration were selected to be included in the models. Among three classes of models, accelerated failure time (AFT)-loglogistic model yielded the best model fitness for estimating households’ susceptibility to disaster-induced power disruption. The model showed that having a substitute, households’ need for the service, race, and access to reliable information are the most significant factors influencing household susceptibility to the power disruptions. Understanding households’ susceptibility to infrastructure service disruptions provides useful insights for prioritizing infrastructure resilience improvements in order to reduce societal impacts.more » « less
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Natural disasters have devastating effects on the infrastructure and disrupt every aspect of daily life in the regions they hit. To alleviate problems caused by these disasters, first an impact assessment is needed. As such, this paper focuses on a two-step methodology to identify the impact of Hurricane Hermine on the City of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida. The regional and socioeconomic variations in the Hermine’s impact were studied via spatially and statistically analyzing power outages. First step includes a spatial analysis to illustrate the magnitude of customers affected by power outages together with a clustering analysis. This step aims to determine whether the customers affected from outages are clustered or not. Second step involves a Bayesian spatial autoregressive model in order to identify the effects of several demographic-, socioeconomic-, and transportation-related variables on the magnitude of customers affected by power outages. Results showed that customers affected by outages are spatially clustered at particular regions rather than being dispersed. This indicates the need to pinpoint such vulnerable locations and develop strategies to reduce hurricane-induced disruptions. Furthermore, the increase in the magnitude of affected customers was found to be associated with several variables such as the power network and total generated trips as well as the demographic factors. The information gained from the findings of this study can assist emergency officials in identifying critical and/or less resilient regions, and determining those demographic and socioeconomic groups which were relatively more affected by the consequences of hurricanes than others.more » « less
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Household power outage experiences vary based on outage characteristics and the household's ability to cope with a disruption. While disaster management scholarship has produced methods to predict where the most significant impacts of a hazard may occur, these methods do not anticipate secondary effects, such as those from power outages. This research is necessary as the expected risks associated with power outages will increase in the United States due to climate change, increasing electricity demand, and aging infrastructure. To understand households' power outage experiences, we collected 896 surveys from three cities in the United States: Detroit, MI; Miami, FL; and Phoenix, AZ. Participants were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service to complete a survey. We hypothesized that racial/ethnic minority groups, specifically non-white households and lower-income households experienced more frequent and prolonged power outages. We also hypothesized that the same groups were more likely to have experienced more significant adverse effects, such as throwing away perishable food and not receiving assistance. We found that non-white households in Phoenix and Detroit were more likely to experience longer outages than white households; however, this association was not present in Miami and was not statistically significant in any city. Income was not a major factor in predicting food waste or assistance received during the longest self-reported outage. Further assessments in varying geographical contexts and more generalizable samples are necessary to increase understanding of how households experience power outages.more » « less
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null (Ed.)There are limited studies that empirically evaluate the interactions between households and infrastructure systems. As a result, the extent to which interruptions in infrastructure services influence different aspects of well-being for different subpopulations is still only vaguely understood. In order to address this knowledge gap, this study investigates multiple dimensions of well-being to derive an empirical relationship between sociodemographic factors of households and their subjective well-being impacts due to disruptions in various infrastructure services during and immediately after Hurricane Harvey. Statistical analysis driven by spearman-rank order correlations and fisher-z tests indicated significant disparities in well-being due to service disruptions among vulnerable population groups. The characterization of well-being is used to explain why and to what extent infrastructure service disruptions influence different subpopulations. The results show that disruptions in particular infrastructure systems are more likely to result in well-being impact disparities, in which racial minorities experience the greatest impact. Similarly, interruptions in services were more likely to evoke changes in social well-being and household’s connectivity to their communities. These findings present novel insights to understanding the role of infrastructure resilience in household well-being, as well as inequalities in well-being impacts across various subpopulations. The approach of the research and its findings enable a paradigm shift towards a more human-centric approach to infrastructure resilience.more » « less
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