Contributed by Sarah C. Reynolds, Dr. Yael R. Glazer and Dr. Michael E. Webber
If I told you to go pound sand, I sure hope you wouldn’t actually do it. Well, unless you’re a Kung Fu master engaging in iron fist training that is. Language can be a funny thing. Read a sentence to two different people, and you’ll likely get two different interpretations of its meaning. One phrase can be both a callous dismissal and an instruction for martial arts training. To add more confusion, the definitions may vary depending on the context. How does anyone get on the same page?
What does “resilience” mean?
Water and power utilities are incorporating resilience into their vocabularies, at least partially inspired by the effects of climate change. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe, directly impacting the critical services utilities provide. To prepare, they’re integrating “resilience” into their systems and planning processes. What does resilience mean to each utility though? To find out, we worked with Pacific Northwest National Lab to interview professionals from thirteen utilities across ten states and summarize our findings.
The bottom line is that there was not a standard definition for resilience among the utilities. The ideas and concepts shared—for example, continuity of service—were similar, but they did not use the same language. The terms reliability, risk, and vulnerability were commonly lumped with resilience. Some utilities said that resilience and reliability can mean the same thing, while others distinguished between them based on timeline and scenario. Reliability is concerned with day-to-day operations and recovery from service interruptions under routine conditions. Resilience is concerned with specific events—for example, wildfires—that do not occur frequently but have significant impacts if they do.
If utilities aren’t sharing a common definition, how can they determine rigorous, consistent metrics for resilience? Doing so is difficult, and it is made more difficult by weather and climate. Resilience metrics will depend on the weather event a utility is trying to plan for, but weather and climate are not consistent across the United States. Despite these challenges, utilities are trying to determine what their resilience metrics should be. In the meantime, other metrics are used as stand-ins for resilience metrics. Power utilities use reliability metrics such as system average interruption duration index (SAIDI). Water utilities use metrics focused on flow and permit compliance—for example, the phosphorus level of the water.
Other complicating factors
There is more to resilience than metrics though. We found many utilities recognize the value of investing in resilience, consistently placing people and culture at the center of such efforts. They recognize that their employees and stakeholders need to buy into resilience and the value of investing in it.
One utility does this through education and outreach. Other utilities build a culture of resilience via long-term plans, which communicate the organization’s goals and transfer knowledge across staffing changes. These plans are developed in collaboration with stakeholders to provide transparency and build trust. Doing so also lends a voice to communities more at risk of service interruptions. One utility uses this feedback to focus their resilience efforts on more vulnerable populations. However, seeking and incorporating input can be challenging. Utilities do not want to introduce additional decision-makers. And for some utilities, they believe they are doing their jobs if they are hidden heroes and the public doesn’t know they are there.
In our outreach, we connected with traditional and combined utilities (gas + power and water + power). Because of their integrated dependence—for example, electricity is needed to treat drinking water, and treated water is needed for power plant cooling—some utilities said they need to account for this nexus in their plans. Power utilities do this by looking at water forecasts for hydroelectric power generation and by protecting water infrastructure from load shedding. Water utilities do this by installing backup generation. But poor integration between power and water in regions where the utilities are distinct, which is the more typical arrangement, is still prevalent. If a utility does provide both services, the power and water departments are siloed into separate organizations. This approach focuses efforts on one’s span of control, but it risks ignoring the interconnections and the potential for cascading impacts. Acknowledging the interdependencies is a first step in building cross-sector awareness and resilience.
There are examples of effective collaboration efforts within each sector. Utilities are pooling together funds and ideas to face potential risks posed by weather events. Some utilities want to give and receive help by joining coalitions—the Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN), for instance—which provide mutual aid after an emergency. Collective responses after Hurricanes Beryl and Helene highlight the power of this kind of mutual aid agreement. Other utilities partner with neighboring utilities to provide water or electricity to increase each other’s supply during an event. For water, this type of aid can be facilitated by adding connections to neighbors’ water laterals.
Utilities can also learn from one another—driving continuous improvement via competitive benchmarking. Comparing what works and what doesn’t helps to continue the discussion around resilience metrics and share ideas on best practices. This kind of external validation is especially important for utilities that have not had their resilience plans tested by an extreme weather event. They can receive guidance from utilities that have been tested and be better prepared to handle an event when it occurs.
Utilities are increasingly aware that extreme weather events will become more likely and more intense because of climate change. As a result, using historical data to forecast the future is increasingly less helpful as upcoming weather events might be worse than the historical worst-case scenarios used for planning purposes. This approach is just like relying on old power demand data to forecast future demand in a rapidly electrifying society. The past is no longer a good predictor of the future.
This recognition highlights the importance of building an updated view of resilience into utility systems. Although “resilience” isn’t standardized across the utility sector, it’s clear those utilities desire to establish a shared definition and metrics. They want consistent guidance on resilience from government and trade organizations as this standardization would support their comfort with innovation, regulatory backing, and cost recovery. It could also enable benchmarking and ensure consistency across the industry. This point is important because an inconsistent approach in implementing resilience does not lead to a more resilient system overall. And consistency starts with speaking the same language. Otherwise, everybody will be Kung Fu fighting.
About the authors
Reynolds is a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Glazer is a Research Associate and Webber is a Professor, both at the Cockrell School of Engineering and LBJ School of Public Affairs, also at The University of Texas at Austin. This article is based on a report prepared with Juliet Homer and Dr. Konstantinos Oikonomou at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
