New study links power outages, social vulnerability in Gulf Coast

A new study shows how extreme weather and power outages can impact socially vulnerable populations in counties near the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The researchers also estimated the 10 counties most and least likely to have long-term power outages in the five states that border the Gulf.

Findings showed that counties with vulnerable populations in terms of social, economic and demographic factors were often susceptible to longer-term outages.

That was especially true along the Mississippi River, in Texas counties bordering the Gulf, in southern and central Florida and throughout Louisiana and Mississippi.

“Communities that are already struggling when a disaster strikes and then endure a long power outage – that can compound their problems,” said Smitha Rao, co-author of the study and assistant professor of social work at The Ohio State University.

“We see this study as a conversation starter, a way to begin prioritizing which communities may need the most help both modernizing their electrical grid and recovering power after disasters.”

The study was published online recently in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

The study is novel by combining power outage, disaster and social vulnerability information (from 2017 to 2022) at the county level in one of the most disaster-prone areas of the United States, said study co-author Shane Scaggs, an incoming President’s Postdoctoral Scholar at Ohio State.

“We didn’t just look at big disasters like hurricanes. Anything that knocked out power from just a few hours to days to weeks was included in our model,” Scaggs said.

“Even short power disruptions can have a big impact on vulnerable communities.”

The study included information on outages and disasters for 482 out of 534 counties in the five-state region.

Findings showed that hurricanes/tropical storms and heat waves were associated with the longest power outages.  Louisiana had longer power outages than the other states.

Longer outages clustered in coastal and riverside counties, particularly along the Mississippi Delta and Florida coast.

The researchers found that seven of the 10 counties predicted to have the longest outages were in Louisiana, all along the Mississippi Delta. Of the remaining three counties, one was in Texas and two were in Florida.

On the measure of social vulnerability, the 10 counties ranged from low to high levels, although most had midlevel to high levels of vulnerability.

“By mapping where social vulnerability and prolonged outages intersect following hazards, we can support decision makers and community leaders in identifying where investments and interventions are most urgently needed,” said study co-author Anaís Roque, an assistant professor of environmental social sciences at Duke University.

The 10 counties with the lowest outage durations were all in Texas, perhaps because more than half the counties in the study were in that state, Rao said.

Just as in the counties with the longest outages, those with the shortest outages had a wide range of social vulnerability, from low to high.

“There wasn’t a simple correlation in which the most vulnerable counties were always the ones with the longest outages,” Scaggs said.

“But the high-vulnerability communities might be more susceptible to harm from long outages because they already have limited capacity to adapt and recover from disasters.”

Rao said this study can help guide where to focus infrastructure investment, grid modernization and community discussions on emergency management.

“We identified the counties that were faring worse on both counts: higher levels of social vulnerability and longer power outages,” she said.

“That may be where conversations can start about making improvements.”

Alexandria Asuan, an undergraduate research assistant who graduated from Ohio State in May, was also a co-author.

This research was supported by the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State.