Examining the Impact of Service Interruptions on Social Groups During Natural Disasters

Natural disasters place tremendous pressure on critical infrastructure systems by testing their service reliability under extreme conditions. System failures are inevitable during harsh events, and prolonged disruptions could pose a serious risk to the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of community residents. However, research has shown that the infrastructure service disruptions will not be experienced the same way by the sub-populations in the community, and socially vulnerable groups tend to suffer more from such disruptions. The research paper suggests that different social factors including income, race/ ethnicity, education, age, medical conditions, house type, homeownership, and years of residence could magnify the disaster impact. The objective of this paper is to identify the social factors most influential to the differences in the disaster impact due to the service disruptions. The temporal and physical context of this study were the transportation, communication services, water, and power outages during and in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The research concluded that specific social groups were disproportionately affected. The findings demonstrate the need to integrate the social dimensions in disaster mitigation and planning practices in order to make improvements on the current condition of the infrastructure systems to address inequalities in risks experienced by the residents due to natural disasters