Power outages and social vulnerability in the U.S. Gulf Coast: multilevel Bayesian models of outage durations amid rising extreme weather

Smitha Rao (), Shane A. Scaggs, Alexandria Asuan and Anais D. Roque
Additional contact information
Smitha Rao: The Ohio State University College of Social Work
Shane A. Scaggs: The Ohio State University College of Arts & Sciences (Department of Anthropology)
Alexandria Asuan: The Ohio State University College of Arts & Sciences (Department of Anthropology)
Anais D. Roque: Nicholas School of the Environment

Palgrave Communications, 2025, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Extreme weather events and disasters, coupled with aging and underfunded infrastructure, threaten critical systems like energy grids. Disruptions in these systems following disasters have cascading impacts on population health and well-being. By combining power outage, disaster, and social vulnerability information (2017–2022) at the county level in one of the most disaster-prone regions of the United States, the Gulf Coast, we created hierarchical Bayesian models to infer profiles of regions experiencing slower restoration following disasters such as tropical storms, heat waves, snowstorms, inter alia. Hurricanes/tropical storms and heat waves were associated with the longest outages regionally. We also estimated the 10 most and least vulnerable counties based on average outages, irrespective of specific hazards. Characterizing community profiles and key vulnerabilities to prolonged post-disaster energy insecurity is critical to prioritizing energy restoration, justice-oriented energy transition policies, and sociotechnical resilience in the region. Comparing observed and predicted outages and accounting for social vulnerabilities, these results can aid planning efforts in community and policy contexts across the region.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-05274-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05274-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05274-0

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().