RAPID: Implications of Utilities Decision-making and Communication Strategies in Urban Populations Response under Extreme Weather Events

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This Grants for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project will investigate how local utilities develop their communication strategy plans and decision making under an extreme weather event and identify both inefficiencies in the communications and decision-making approaches to enhance communications and ensure more equitable outcomes. The extreme weather events caused by the Polar Vortex in spring 2021 impacted Texas’ energy and water infrastructures, leaving millions of Texans without access to these basic services. An issue that played a role in exacerbating the impacts incurred by communities was the inadequate communication between utilities and the community. This RAPID project seeks to understand inefficiencies in the communication approaches from utilities to their community-based customers as well as decision making when grid failures forced blackouts. The empirical knowledge derived from this work will support research at the intersection of disasters, utilities' communications, and impact on households and the built environment. Additionally, findings have the potential to help identify opportunities for utilities to build resilience in their decision making and communication efforts. The project team will create technical guidance for utilities to proactively strengthen communication strategies thereby promote NSF’s mission of generating science to help advance the health, prosperity, and welfare of our nation’s communities. This research focuses on capturing the ephemeral data from semi-structured interviews in three research thrusts areas. First, existing outage data will be coupled with interview data and data from other sources to spatially capture and resolve areas within communities that experienced power loss, their duration, and timing during the extreme weather events. Next, interview data collected from utilities will enable the understanding of their communication approaches and decision making under 'typical' and 'crisis' periods. These data will identify opportunities for utilities to build resilience in their communication efforts. Lastly, additional interviews with community groups and stakeholders will provide an understanding of how utilities' communications were received and processed, and how alternative grassroots communication approaches were developed in response to the lack of basic services. Broadly, this research will create technical guidance to inform key critical sectors (e.g., water, electricity) on effective communication approaches with customers during extreme weather events and highlight equitable decision-making opportunities. The research will also inform communications theory by linking social interactions under crises with communication patterns between utilities and customers. An iterative process will identify and suggest strategies for evaluating equity-oriented decision-making processes prior to electric load shedding.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.