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arXiv · 2509.02653

Quantifying the Social Costs of Power Outages and Restoration Disparities Across Four U.S. Hurricanes

Xiangpeng Li·Junwei Ma·Bo Li·Ali Mostafavi
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Abstract

The multifaceted nature of disaster impact shows that densely populated areas contribute more to aggregate burden, while sparsely populated but heavily affected regions suffer disproportionately at the individual level. This study introduces a framework for quantifying the societal impacts of power outages by translating customer weighted outage exposure into deprivation measures, integrating welfare metrics with three recovery indicators, average outage days per customer, restoration duration, and relative restoration rate, computed from sequential EAGLE I observations and linked to Zip Code Tabulation Area demographics. Applied to four United States hurricanes, Beryl 2024 Texas, Helene 2024 Florida, Milton 2024 Florida, and Ida 2021 Louisiana, this standardized pipeline provides the first cross event, fine scale evaluation of outage impacts and their drivers. Results demonstrate regressive patterns with greater burdens in lower income areas, mechanistic analysis shows deprivation increases with longer restoration durations and decreases with faster restoration rates, explainable modeling identifies restoration duration as the dominant driver, and clustering reveals distinct recovery typologies not captured by conventional reliability metrics. This framework delivers a transferable method for assessing outage impacts and equity, comparative cross event evidence linking restoration dynamics to social outcomes, and actionable spatial analyses that support equity informed restoration planning and resilience investment.

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Xiangpeng Li, Junwei Ma, Bo Li, Ali Mostafavi. 2025-09-05. Quantifying the Social Costs of Power Outages and Restoration Disparities Across Four U.S. Hurricanes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02653

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