To what extent is electricity central to resilience and disaster management of the built environment?

Purpose:This paper aims to establish two key points. Firstly that there is a gap in the resilience literature, and to show that electricityneeds to play a more central role in all the academic research fields associated with ‘disasters’ and ‘resilient cities’.Design/methodology/approach:Two approaches were used, database interrogation and establishing areas of expertise in the resilience and disaster case studyliterature. Firstly a database search was carried out, and the ‘keyword’ and ‘abstract’ fields searched for electricity related words.Then academic papers, and reports by public bodies were analysed to establish which academic disciplines are most active in thisarea of research.Findings:This paper shows; that only 3.9% of the 4127 papers analyzed, had key words connected to electricity, and that there is not aspecific discipline within the resilience literature looking explicitly at how electricity effects the built environment.Research implications:This paper implies that the role of electricity, in the academic literature associated with resilience, is under represented. A futureresearch agenda should be developed that more adequately reflects the importance of electricity to the resilience of the builtenvironment.Practical implicationsWith more focused research, into how the loss of electrical energy affects all aspects of life during and post disaster, betterapproaches to disaster risk reduction and management can be formulated.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to analyses the literature to understand how important the continuity of electrical supply is to the resilientcitiesand disaster management academic communities, and has highlighted this theme as a gap in the literature.* Corresponding author E-mail address: m.c.kinn@edu.salford.ac.uk OR moshe@dcisthefuture.org