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In February 2021, severe winter weather in Texas caused widespread electrical blackouts, water outages, and boil water notices. Water systems faced extensive challenges due to cascading failures across multiple interde- pendent infrastructure systems. Water utilities have since made considerable progress in improving resilience to extreme events, but ongoing challenges remain. Through a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 20 large water utilities in Texas, this study tracks the evolution of water infrastructure resilience across three phases: the storm and immediate aftermath, the subsequent one-year period, and the “new normal” in the post-disaster environment. We consider five dimensions of resilience—economic, environmental, governance, infrastructure, and social—to identify where solutions have been implemented and where barriers remain. This study contributes to efforts throughout the United States to build more robust water systems by capturing lessons learned from Winter Storm Uri and providing recommendations to improve hazard preparedness, resilience, and public health. 

A severe winter storm in February 2021 impacted multiple infrastructure systems in Texas, leaving over 13 million people without electricity and/or water, potentially $100 billion in economic damages, and almost 250 lives lost. While the entire state was impacted by temperatures up to 10 °C colder than expected for this time of year, as well as levels of snow and ice accumulation not observed in decades, the responses and outcomes from communities were inconsistent and exacerbated prevailing social and infrastructure inequities that are still impacting those communities. In this contribution, we synthesize a subset of multiple documented inequities stemming from the interdependence of the water, housing, transportation, and communication sectors with the energy sector, and present a summary of actions to address the interdependency of infrastructure system inequities. 

Climate change poses a multifaceted, complex, and existential threat to human health and well-being, but efforts to communicate these threats to the public lag behind what we know how to do in communication research. Effective communication about climate change’s health risks can improve a wide variety of individual and population health-related outcomes by: (1) helping people better make the connection between climate change and health risks and (2) empowering them to act on that newfound knowledge and understanding. The aim of this manuscript is to highlight communication methods that have received empirical support for improving knowledge uptake and/or driving higher-quality decision making and healthier behaviors and to recommend how to apply them at the intersection of climate change and health. This expert consensus about effective communication methods can be used by healthcare professionals, decision makers, governments, the general public, and other stakeholders including sectors outside of health. In particular, we argue for the use of 11 theory-based, evidence-supported communication strategies and practices. These methods range from leveraging social networks to making careful choices about the use of language, narratives, emotions, visual images, and statistics. Message testing with appropriate groups is also key. When implemented properly, these approaches are likely to improve the outcomes of climate change and health communication efforts.

 

Prior research has established the feasibility of conducting online interviews and observations, yet there is limited guidance in how to interact with participants when conducting fully mediated research with screen-sharing and video. This study, conducted during early phases of COVID-19, included 15 volunteer tweet-annotators working with an emergency response organization. This method contribution uses cues-related and surveillance theories to reveal challenges and best practices when asking research participants to share their screen, be on video, and participate in a multiple-interview study. The findings suggest that researchers conducting online-mediated research should be prepared to provide technical support for the devices and interfaces participants use during the study, find ways to “see” beyond what is on the mediated screen, and consider ethical issues not often discussed. In addition to these findings, an output of this research is two brief training videos useful for other researchers embarking on conducting fully mediated research.