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Power systems serve social communities that consist of residential, commercial, and industrial customers. As a result, the disaster resilience of a power system should account for social community resilience. The social behavior and psychological features of all stakeholders involved in a disaster influence the level of power system preparedness, mitigation, recovery, adaptability, and resilience. Hence, there is a need to consider the social community's effect on the power system and the dependence between them in determining a power system's resilient to human-made and natural hazards. The social community, such as a county, city, or state, consists of various stakeholders, e.g., social consumers, social prosumers, and utilities. In this paper, we develop a multi-dimensional output-oriented method to measure resilience. The three key ideas for measuring power system resilience are the multi-dimensionality, output-oriented, and degraded functionality aspects of the power system. To this end, we develop an artificial society based on neuroscience, social science, and psychological theories to model the behavior of consumers and prosumers and the interdependence between power system resilience, comsumer and prosumer well-being, and community capital. Both mental health and physical health are used as metrics of well-being, while the level of cooperation is used to measure community capital resilience.
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Equity and resilience in local urban food systems: a case study
Abstract Local food systems can have economic and social benefits by providing income for producers and improving community connections. Ongoing global climate change and the acute COVID-19 pandemic crisis have shown the importance of building equity and resilience in local food systems. We interviewed ten stakeholders from organizations and institutions in a U.S. midwestern city exploring views on past, current, and future conditions to address the following two objectives: 1) Assess how local food system equity and resilience were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) Examine how policy and behavior changes could support greater equity and resilience within urban local food systems. We used the Community Capitals Framework to organize interviewees’ responses for qualitative analyses of equity and resilience. Four types of community capital were emphasized by stakeholders: cultural and social, natural, and political capital. Participants stated that the local food system in this city is small; more weaknesses in food access, land access, and governance were described than were strengths in both pre- and post-pandemic conditions. Stakeholder responses also reflected lack of equity and resilience in the local food system, which was most pronounced for cultural and social, natural and political capitals. However, local producers’ resilience during the pandemic, which we categorized as human capital, was a notable strength. An improved future food system could incorporate changes in infrastructure (e.g., food processing), markets (e.g., values-based markets) and cultural values (e.g., valuing local food through connections between local producers and consumers). These insights could inform policy and enhance community initiatives and behavior changes to build more equitable and resilient local food systems in urban areas throughout the U.S. Midwest.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1855902
- PAR ID:
- 10495278
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Agriculture and Human Values
- Volume:
- 41
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0889-048X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1239-1256
- Size(s):
- p. 1239-1256
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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