RAPID: Socio-Technical Restoration of Hurricane Isaac Power Outages

该快速响应研究基金（Rapid）项目重点关注2012年8月29日艾萨克飓风造成的路易斯安那州停电。飓风导致至少24个教区部分用户断电。对新奥尔良来说，飓风造成的停电规模仅次于卡特里娜飓风。停电和恢复过程引发了公众和政府官员对路易斯安那州两家主要私营电力公司的广泛批评。该项目的目标是了解电力恢复速度，电力公司的行动，以及其他因素如何影响对客户的实际和感知影响，以及公众和政府官员的反应。换句话说，公众和政府对电力恢复速度的批评是否源于对客户的可衡量影响？作为该项目的一部分，将确定和记录停电模式及其相关的社会、经济和生态影响。客户、应急管理人员和政府官员对电力恢复活动的反应和表现将被记录下来。两大电力公司的恢复决策，以及可能影响这些决定的背景将被描述。将从地区企业收集有关停电特征、影响和企业反应的详细数据。将分析项目数据，以探索中断时间是否会导致业务影响的可量化差异，以及中断模式对某些类型的客户的影响是否比其他类型的客户更大。本项目的数据收集将通过文献汇编、实地访谈、直接观察和电话调查等方式完成。我们的期望是，调查结果将表明，公众和政界要求更快或更好地恢复的呼声不是基于增加停机时间的可测量影响，而是基于特定于不同类型的客户和政府职能的其他原因。这项研究将有助于减少停电对企业、家庭和政府服务的影响。该项目的研究结果也将有助于为电力公司的恢复绩效制定合理、客观的指导方针和标准。公用事业供应商和应急管理机构将从这项研究中受益，通过最终改进电力恢复实践，在技术性能和公共或政府关系方面。或者，可以根据这项工作的结果制定消费者策略，以避免中断带来的负面影响。这项工作将为其他研究人员调查新工具、政策和实践的优点奠定基础，以改善社区从广泛停电的灾难中恢复的能力。

This Rapid Response Research Grant (RAPID) project focuses on the Louisiana power outages caused by Hurricane Isaac on August 29, 2012. The hurricane resulted in loss of power to some customers in at least 24 parishes. For New Orleans, the size of the power outage caused by the hurricane is second only to Hurricane Katrina. The power outage and restoration process led to broad, vocal criticism of the two major private power companies serving Louisiana from the public and government officials. The goal of this project is to understand how power restoration speed, power utility actions, and other factors influence the real and perceived impacts to customers, as well as reactions of the public and government officials. In other words, are public and government criticisms of power restoration speed rooted in measurable impacts to customers with increasing outage times? As part of this project, the power outage patterns and the social, economic, and ecological impacts related to them will be identified and documented. Reactions to the power restoration activities and performance from a sampling of customers, emergency managers, and government officials will be documented. Restoration decisions of the two major power companies, as well as the context that might have influenced these decisions will be characterized. Detailed data will be collected from area business with respect to power outage characteristics, impacts, and reactions from the businesses. Project data will be analyzed to explore whether outage time results in a quantifiable difference in business impacts, as well as whether outage patterns effected some types of customers more so than others. Data collection for this project will be done through document compilation, field interviews, direct observation, and phone surveys. The expectation is that findings will show public and political calls for faster or improved restoration is not based on measurable impacts of increasing outage time, but for other reasons that are specific to different type of customers and government functions.This research will contribute to reducing power outage impacts to businesses, households, and government services. The results of the project will also help to set reasonable, objective guidelines and criteria for restoration performance of power companies. Utility providers and emergency management agencies will benefit from this research through eventual improvement to power restoration practices with respect to both technical performance and public or government relations. Alternatively, consumer strategies can be developed based on results of this work to avoid negative impacts from outages. This work will establish a basis for other researchers to investigate the merits of new tools, policies, and practices for improving community recovery from disasters with widespread power outages.