Sara K. E. Peterson’s research while affiliated with National Renewable Energy Laboratory and other places

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 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.

Executive Summary Overview Critical infrastructure encompasses energy, water and wastewater, communications, transportation, food, health, and emergency services. When critical infrastructure is damaged or fails, essential services are interrupted and this can have severe health and well-being consequences. Our study examines how infrastructure disruptions, and hence infrastructure service interruptions, place a burden on households by impeding their capabilities, such as accessing drinking water, storing and preparing food, removing wastewater, and cooling or heating their homes. Because these household-level impacts of infrastructure disruptions are currently unmeasured, they are not adequately considered in infrastructure provision or public health planning. This study assessed the impacts of power outages on households in Puerto Rico to help inform disaster mitigation and preparedness strategies so that future power outages do not have such serious, and perhaps deadly, consequences. Research Questions These questions guided this research: What critical household capabilities were disrupted during recent power outages in Puerto Rico? How did these disrupted capabilities differ according to outage duration? What were the time, monetary, health, and well-being impacts and costs associated with these interrupted capabilities? How did these vary according to outage duration? What role (if any) did social factors such as social capital, community ties, and community cohesion have in mitigating household impacts? How did these disrupted household capabilities and costs differ across urban, rural, and suburban community types? Research Design The survey company, Qualtrics, was hired to administer an island-wide survey of Puerto Rican households (n=395) between December, 2021 and March, 2022. Sample recruitment sought to mirror census data on income and education, and to oversample rural households to ensure adequate data across community types. Respondents were asked to identify a significant power outage that occurred in the past three years and to answer questions about the impact of that outage on their household capabilities (e.g., cooling their homes, preparing food, etc.) and the physical, mental, and overall health and well-being of their household members. Other questions covered access to food, water, and healthcare, and social capital. Data analysis compared sample demographics to census data to gauge sample representativeness and used statistical techniques to explore relationships between key variables, such as outage duration and reported health impacts. Findings Disruptions to cooling and food refrigeration were the most frequently reported impacts, the most highly ranked impacts on the health and well-being of household members, and the most time and financially intensive disruptions. Respondents identified disruptions to communications and information access as negatively affecting their mental health in particular. The outage reduced life satisfaction for most respondents and was a significant factor in determining the severity of impacts. Aggregate measures of social capital did not have a significant impact on the number and types of disruptions, time and financial burdens, nor changes in well-being reported by households. Rural households were most likely to report disruptions to the use of in-home health devices, whereas urban households were most likely to report disruptions in accessing healthcare outside the home. Urban households were more likely to report food refrigeration as having the single greatest impact, but rural and suburban were more likely to report issues with food access. Moreover, rural households were most likely to report accessing potable water as their greatest need. Results suggest that rural households, households with young children, and households reporting one or more illnesses or disabilities reported more health impacts from power outages than other household types. Also, households living below the poverty level, on average, reported less disruptions types but spent significantly more time and more money coping with each disruption. On the other hand, higher income households were associated with a greater number of disruptions types, resulting in more time burdens coping with disruptions overall. Public Health Implications The results suggest that providing cooling resources (i.e., fans and/or air conditioning at community centers with back-up power systems) and refrigeration (i.e., access to ice or community provided refrigeration for food and medicine) are important interventions to safeguard health and well-being outcomes during outages. For mental health, enhanced community outreach and diversified communication channels may be particularly impactful. Preparedness efforts focused on identifying households that depend upon electricity to power medical devices or to refrigerate medication should be prioritized and contingency plans developed. Because households with young children and/or disabilities were found to experience more severe health consequences from outages, interventions focused on providing childcare and dependent care during disruptions are recommended. The results indicated variations in impacts and vulnerabilities by community type (i.e., rural, suburban, urban), suggesting that strategies for mitigation and preparedness should be customized at the local level. In particular, efforts to address the challenges related to disruptions to in-home health services, food access, and potable water access in rural communities should also be prioritized.

Communities in the United States are increasingly dependent upon aging infrastructure systems and challenged by more frequent and intense extreme weather events due in part to climate change. However, prioritizing resilience-related investments in these systems is hindered by the lack of performance metrics that objectively quantify the societal outcomes of infrastructure disruptions, such as power or water outages. This article outlines the process of developing an equity-focused resilience metric that captures the social consequences of infrastructure service disruptions on households. Theoretically grounded in the Capabilities Approach (CA) theory of human development, this metric focuses on estimating the burden of post-event adaptations taken by households to maintain their basic capabilities (e.g., ability to access food and water) and fulfill important household functionings (e.g., maintaining health and well-being). A travel cost method (TCM) that considers travel-related expenses, direct out-of-pocket expenses, and opportunity costs is presented as a way to measure the value of locations (e.g., grocery stores, emergency shelters, etc.) that provide services that enable households to maintain capabilities. A gravity-weighted model of accessibility is also discussed as a way to capture the value of having multiple potential service locations from which to choose and offers a way to capture important factors impacting a household’s ability to access important goods and services during outages. The proposed social burden metric equation incorporates the valuation principles of the TCM into the framework of the gravity model, resulting in a novel metric with strong methodological heritage. The article concludes by discussing the types of data needed to populate the proposed metric and future applications of this work that could inform the resilient infrastructure investments and planning necessary to mitigate the social burdens of power outages on vulnerable populations.