Incorporating Community Resilience Concepts into Utility Asset Management Practices

Infrastructure failures have drastically different impacts on different members of society, including under-resourced and vulnerable communities, disadvantaged neighborhoods, and other critical customers. This research approach offers the potential to provide immediate benefits to utilities and decision-makers. With this project, the team will document existing challenges, initiatives, and promising solutions. The objective of this project is to generate a guidebook, which will consist of guidelines to identify, engage, and educate stakeholders (including vulnerable communities); a cost of failure calculation tool to identify assets with high direct and social costs; guidelines and technical assistance on identifying sources of funding; and a framework for self-assessment and improvement. The deliverables will be prepared in such a way that utilities of all types and sizes will be able to determine the next steps they need to take to promptly improve their equity and environmental justice maturity levels.