Spatial regression identifies socioeconomic inequality in multi-stage power outage recovery after Hurricane Isaac

Abstract

Power outages are a common outcome of hurricanes in the USA with potentially serious implications for community wellbeing. Understanding how power outage recovery is influenced by factors such as the magnitude of the outage, storm characteristics, and community demographics is key to building community resilience. Outage data are a valuable tool that can help to better understand how hurricanes affect built infrastructure and influence the management of short-term infrastructure recovery process. We conduct a spatial regression analysis on customers experiencing outages and the total power recovery time to investigate the factors influencing power outage recovery in Louisiana after Hurricane Isaac. Our interest was in whether infrastructure damage and recovery times resulting from a hurricane disproportionately affect socioeconomically vulnerable populations and racial minorities. We find that median income is a significant predictor of the time it takes to restore 50%, 80%, and 95% of the total outages within a ZIP Code Tabulation Area, even after controlling for hurricane characteristics and total outages. Higher income geographies and higher income adjacent geographies experience faster recovery times. Our findings point to possible inequities associated with income in power outage recovery prioritization, which cannot be explained by exposure to outages, storm characteristics, or the presence of critical services such as hospitals and emergency response stations. These results should inform more equitable responses to power outages in the future helping to improve overall community resilience.