Weaving Equity into Infrastructure Resilience Research and Practice: A Decadal Review and Future Directions

Abstract

After about a decade of research in this domain, what is missing is a systematic overview of the research agenda across different infrastructures and hazards. It is now imperative to evaluate the current progress and gaps. This paper presents a systematic review of equity literature on disrupted infrastructure during a natural hazard event. Following a systematic review protocol, we collected, screened, and evaluated almost 3,000 studies. Our analysis focuses on the intersection within the dimensions of the eight-dimensional assessment framework that distinguishes focus of the study, methodological approaches, and equity dimensions (distributional-demographic, distributional-spatial, procedural, and capacity equity). To conceptualize the intersection of the different dimensions of equity, we refer to pathways, which identify how equity is constructed, analyzed, and used. Significant findings show that (1) the interest in equity in infrastructure resilience has exponentially increased, (2) the majority of studies are in the US and by extension in the global north, (3) most data collection use descriptive and open-data and none of the international studies use location-intelligence data. The most prominent equity conceptualization is distributional equity, such as the disproportionate impacts to vulnerable populations and spaces. The most common pathways to study equity connect distributional equity to the infrastructure's power, water, and transportation in response to flooding and hurricane storms. Other equity concepts or pathways, such as connections of equity to decision-making and building household capacity, remain understudied. Future research directions include quantifying the social costs of infrastructure disruptions and better integration of equity into resilience decision-making.